When you prepare a resume using accomplishment statements, you not only describe your skills, but you demonstrate how you used these skills.
Yana Parker describes Accomplishment statements as “so what” statements. An accomplishment statement tells what you did, but also the significance or outcome of that action.
Here are some examples of accomplishment statements:
- Initiated a customer service strategy, which helped to increase store sales by 5% over six months
- Developed operations systems integrated with production and marketing, greatly improving profitability.
- Operated a riveting machine on a fast paced assembly line, working as a team to meet and exceed production targets.
- Earned regular bonuses for bringing in new customers while also maintaining a full past-customer portfolio.
- Chosen as lead of fifteen employees in clothing department to provide training for new employees.
Ask yourself the following questions as you reword these statements:
- What problem was I able to solve using this skill?
- What action did I take to resolve the problem?
- Was there a beneficial action or result that I can point to that resulted from this action?
- Is there a particular success story about something I accomplished using this skill?
- Can I demonstrate the use of this skill in a measurable way using facts and figures (i.e. increased sales by 40%, supervised 40 employees, saved company $40,000)
- Was I recognized by my employer, co-workers or customers for using this skill?
- Did I save the company money? Did I increase productivity or sales?
- Did I implement a new project or idea using this skill?
This re-wording exercise takes careful crafting and can often take two or three tries to get the wording right.
