Secrets Of A Resume Part 2: Writing About Your Value
The three areas that you need to master to have a great resume are:
Understand what your audience will value
Writing about that value (content)
Formatting your resume in a way that makes it easy to read
In Part #1 of Secrets Of A Great Resume, I discussed understanding your audience and what they value.
If you missed that article, find it here.
In Part 2 of the series Secrets of a Great Resume, let’s explore writing about your value.
Matching Your Career Accomplishment and Experience to What an Employer Values
Many job seekers think that writing a list of job responsibilities is all that is needed to show their value. As a former recruiter, I can tell you that is wrong thinking.
A list of job duties may tell the reader what you were supposed to do. It says nothing about how you performed on the job, which is where your true value comes into play.
Instead, you need to connect the dots between what they value and what you offer. You should now have a list of the knowledge, experience, skills, strengths, and personal attributes employers seek. Next, you need to write down everything in your professional career (and even your personal life, such as volunteering) that matches them.
As an example, let’s say that from your research, you learn that the ability to problem solve is a valued skill. What you now want to do is look back over your professional career and come up with examples of when you had to problem-solve.
To help prompt your remembrance, here are some questions you might ask yourself.
What have been some of the biggest work challenges that you have faced?
How have you increased sales or revenue for your employer?
What have you done to decrease costs for your employer?
Have you been able to create any efficiencies or improved productivity?
Have you ever gone above and beyond for an employer?
Did you initiate something that did not exist prior?
Did you minimize customer complaints?
While I use the example of problem-solving concerning these questions, they can prompt you to answer how you used other skills, such as negotiation, communication, mentoring, etc.
If you have more than one example (and I would always try to get at least two for each value item), prioritize them based on recency and relevancy. Employers will value demonstrations of your value that are more recent. But do not overlook the examples that go back in your work history that are most relevant. If you were in marketing communications but you pivoted into project management but now are looking to return to marketing communications roles, an experience from your marketing communications days, even though older, may be more relevant to your audience.
Metrics Are Important
In the problem-solving example, it is great to identify your abilities. But what will provide even more interest is if you have a quantifiable measurement of your impact. Your readers will like numbers, percentages, or money to bolster your claim of value.
What is going to catch the eye of your reader more?
A story about renegotiating lease agreements when government regulations changed.
Or
A story about renegotiating lease agreements when government regulations changed, which resulted in saving an estimated 10% in additional maintenance costs.
With a metric, the magnitude of the impact of the skill you are demonstrating is more apparent. But you might think that there is no way to quantify the result. Some positions are metrics-driven, and finding results can be easy. In others, that is often not how your performance is evaluated. But I would still think about how you could quantify your results.
Did you save time? You could quantify that in time saved (ex. Saved 5 hours per week performing invoice auditing).
How many people were positively impacted by what you did (ex. Trained 400 employees over 5 months)?
Did your ranking change as a result (ex. #1 ranked department in employee engagement survey)?
Sometimes you may no longer know exact numbers. If that is the case, you can use a range you feel is accurate.
Saved on average 5 hours performing invoice auditing.
Trained 375+ employees.
Note: Having accurate numbers is very helpful and builds credibility. That is why you should be tracking performance metrics and storing them to refer to as needed.
What Do Others Say about You?
You don’t have to go into your memory banks solely to figure out how you would provide value to an employer. You can also show that connection through what others have said about you.
An excellent place to show value is with any awards you have received. As long as the award is relevant to what you would do with a new employer, it can prove who you are and what you can do. These are examples of the type of awards that you might want to include on your resume.
Job-related awards (sales, leadership, performance, innovation, etc.)
Industry-related awards
Military awards
Academic awards
Athletic awards
Volunteer, community, or civic awards
You may also have received more informal recognition, such as thank you notes. It is always good to keep these filed away, as they can be powerful proof, especially from higher-ups in your organization or industry leaders, of what you have done that was noteworthy. Recommendations and testimonials can also be helpful written proof of your abilities. Putting what others have to say about you on your resume can be very powerful in the right circumstances.
How to Tell a Story About Your Success
Now that you know what you want to put on your resume, how do you go about writing it? A great way is to tell stories about what you did and how you did it. Stories are memorable. Facts and figures on their own are less so.
Some of the best resumes that I have read have readily apparent themes and connect-the-dots between what the employers want and what the person can offer. If you choose to use a professional summary section, this is a good place, in a few sentences, to set up the theme(s) of your resume.
Let me give you an example.
Creative, hands-on leader who builds innovative teams and loyal partners, which fuels extraordinary market capture and profit growth. First to market with new technology and several industry “firsts” which have driven brand awareness and consumer loyalty.
So what does the reader learn from this story? Well, a few things.
This individual is innovative - new tech and industry “firsts.”
Significant success with market capture, brand awareness, profitability
Builds teams of innovators and loyal partners
Those themes should match the value that employers need from a candidate. The themes can then be expanded upon in the body of the experience section. There should be information to support these statements further, such as the following:
Took advantage of new cellular assessment technology for skin health to develop in-office testing for dermatology practices. (Innovation)
Hired 10-person team of biologists, data scientists, and market analysts to incubate new product developments. 5 products have gone to market with first-year revenues beating estimates. (Team Building)
Produced 20% increase in market share for skin vitamins line by introducing a new application process that consumers found easier with less waste. (Market Share/Customer Loyalty)
Your professional summary can also highlight industries, clients and suppliers, or technical skills that the employer will value.
An example of a professional summary focused on these aspects is below.
Client Service Director with significant international experience in North and Central America, Europe, MENA, and Asia-Pacific with CPG companies in food and beverage and household goods. Grows and manages multimillion-dollar client relationships by developing critical business relationships with C-level executives and decision-makers.
In the body of the resume, under your professional experience, talk specifically about your international, CPG, and relationship building.
When writing content, it is good to think about the challenge or opportunity faced, the action taken, and the result, to tell an interesting and meaningful story.
Ways to Enhance Your Stories
It would be best to employ some subtle psychology when you write a resume. One of the ways you can do this is to use action-oriented words. The second, especially important for job changes, is to use the language of your new industry or job.
Action-oriented words are important because they show how you impacted a program, process, or people. You took action to make something happen. That is why you want to write using strong action-oriented verbs, especially to start a sentence.
You can have the sentence, “Hired 10-person team of biologists, data scientists, and market analysts to incubate new product developments.”
Or you could write it this way, “A 10-person team of biologists, data scientists, and market analysts was hired to incubate new product development.”
Which do you think makes you seem more impactful?
The second action your should remember to take is to write in the language of that job or industry. If there is terminology that is commonly used, make sure to incorporate it into your resume word choice. In the hospitality industry, a demarcation of roles would be front of the house (FOH) and back of the house (BOH). In Finance, it could be amortization or collateral. Always try to use terms that have meaning in that industry to show your knowledge and value.
Where I See Job Seekers Run Into Problems
There are two areas where job seekers face difficulties when writing their resumes, 1) trying to be a jack-of-all-trades 2) writing for themselves and not their audience. Let me address the first one. As discussed in Part #1 of this series, success comes from knowing what your future employer needs, and we have talked about how to write stores to show this. Unfortunately, some people believe in showing value in all sorts of areas and hoping that the employer will see this as an asset. This is what I call the jack-of-all-trades approach—I can do this, and this, and even some of this.
Unfortunately, this is not how what employers typically value. They value the knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed in that job. When you try to be a jack-of-all-trades, you end up being, as the saying goes, a master of none. That is how you are evaluated by a hiring manager; as not having the significant value needed for this particular role. I would highly suggest against this approach.
I see the second problem when you put achievements on your resume because you are attached to them. Too often, people are connected to stories that mean a lot to them. While rescuing two children from a fire while a public safety officer is commendable, it may not be relevant if you apply for a business analyst position. Always choose stories that show your qualifications for that job on your resume. If in the interview it comes up that they want to know about your quick-thinking, then, by all means, you can use this example. But if you do not see quick-thinking as a skill explicitly discussed for a role, then put something else on your resume that addresses the knowledge, skills, or attributes most wanted.
Conclusion
Having your resume address what the employer will find of value is extremely important. Writing the stories in a way that shows your impact will interest potential employers. This is so much better than writing a list of job duties. It will make you of more interest relative to your competition.
Shelley Piedmont is a Career Coach. She wants to help job seekers put their best foot forward by providing the tools for a successful job search. I help job seekers prepare for interviews. You can engage me to help you prep for any type of interview. Schedule a 15-minute no-obligation consultation.