Here you are with 10 years of experience. With each new job, you have endeavored to further your career. You have developed skills and experience that position you strategically for the next position based upon your accomplishments. So when you write your resume, why do choose to only focus on your responsibilities and duties?
Resumes are never about your responsibilities and duties. In fact, here’s a secret that all hiring managers know, but won’t tell you. Job-description resumes NEVER sell you to a prospective employer. If you want to sell yourself to the all-omnipotent hiring manager and get an interview, your resume has to be accomplishment-oriented.
Get An Athlete Mentality
In order to see the bigger picture, let me give you this analogy. You should always consider your resume to be your “stats sheet.” It should be written in a manner that will motivate the hiring manager to see your worth and give you a chance. It is your history of performance.
Take Brett Favre for example; Quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, for those who didn’t know. If you are interested in putting him on your team, you don’t care what his responsibilities or duties were on the Green Bay team, because if he was the quarterback, as a coach you know. All you are interested in are his statistics: How many interceptions did he have? How many injuries? How many turnovers? How many touchdowns? How many winning games in a season? Did he bring the team to the Super Bowl? Is he a team player or a prima donna?
Your resume is no different from Brett Favre’s stat sheet. Prospective employers are not only interested in knowing if you have a working knowledge of the duties and responsibilities of a position, which all candidates will have, but more importantly they want to see what you have been able to achieve in that position and how you benefited the company. What sets you apart of other candidates who will most certainly be able to perform the very same responsibilities and duties?
Strategy Recap:
- Always use accomplishments-oriented language when writing your resume. Job-description language does not sell a resume. It’s your stats that sells you to a prospective employer. Show how you’ve taken initiative and made your jobs your own.
- Ask yourself these questions when writing entries for each employer. What did you do? How did you accomplish it? What were the results? How did it benefit the company?
- Be prepared to elaborate to a hiring manager in your interview any specifics about our accomplishments.
It’s that simple.
