Highlight Your Accomplishments
When reading your resume, the first thing an employer wants to know is what has this person done that can help us at our company? You can help answer this question by including your accomplishments.
Here are some questions to help you think about your accomplishments:
- Did you bring in new business by creating a new product or service?
- Did you help retain customers by ensuring high-quality products and services?
- Did you save time and money by making a process or procedure more efficient?
- Did you communicate well with customers and employees?
To identify your accomplishments, career experts often recommend a method called CAR (Challenge, Action, Result). What challenge you were presented with? What action did you take? What was the result?
Here's an example from our sample resume for Beth Smith, an administrative assistant looking for work as a project coordinator:
| Challenge | Action | Result |
Beth was asked to look at the company's online project file system, which was disorganized and hard to use. | She analyzed the system and reorganized it so information was more logically arranged and easier to find. | She made consultants' work easier, which saved them time and allowed them to serve customers more effectively. |
Think about what you did in past jobs. What problems did you solve? What solutions did you come up with? What benefits did this have for the business, customers. or employees?
Here's how Beth expressed the accomplishments from the table above:
Led a project to streamline and reorganize the company's SharePoint project file system, making it easier and faster for consultants to find information and serve customers.
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