Resumes

How to Write Accomplishments & Show Your Value

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There are many people, sometimes 1,000 or more, applying for the same job. As an applicant, it is critical that you know how to differentiate yourself from others. There are lots of ways you can demonstrate your value—in a cover letter, in your resume, in your interview, and through your thank you note. No matter which way or ways you choose to show your value-add, the “how” is pretty consistent.

Follow these steps:

Track your achievements. Get in the habit of writing down (or using an electronic format) for your accomplishments throughout the year. Spend 5 minutes a week to make some notes. Not only will those notes be useful when you prepare your resume, they will be useful in writing your annual accomplishment report for your performance evaluation, preparing for interviews, etc. In that file, keep a copy of “kudos” received from customers, team members, and your boss, as well as awards and other recognition you have received.

Keep your numbers. In addition to tracking achievements, be sure to quantify those achievements. It’s one thing to say you saved money or increased productivity, using a number to describe the savings or productivity takes that achievements to a whole new level. When think about numbers, think: how many, how much, and how often.

Use strong language to describe your success.
There are lots of powerful verbs out there; use them! Some of the words you might use include:

  • Improved
  • Enhanced
  • Saved
  • Created
  • Developed
  • Reduced
  • Achieved
  • Identified

Think CCAR. CCAR (context, challenge, action, result) is a powerful way to frame your achievements and tell your story. CCAR can be used for resume accomplishments, as well as in your performance self-assessment and in interviews. Here is what it means:

Context.  Describe the individuals and groups you worked with, and/or the environment in which you worked, to address a particular challenge (e.g., complexity, co-workers, members of Congress, shrinking budget, low morale, impossibly short deadlines). Make sure this is at the executive level. Think about examples where you were the initiator of an idea that had enterprise-wide impact.

Challenge.  Describe a specific problem that needed to be solved. Remember to think as holistically as possible. Think about the large-scale project/problem, if you have suitable examples.

Action.  Discuss the specific actions YOU took to address a challenge. Use “I” not “we” even if you were part of a team.

Result.  Give specific examples of measures/outcomes that had some impact on the organization. These accomplishments demonstrate the quality and effectiveness of your work toward organizational goals. Metrics always help support your results. If your result was qualitative, how can you show it was substantial? Perhaps a quotation from an award recommendation or performance evaluation, or a comparison to a prior situation.

Here’s what it looks like in response to an interview question:

Context: “I work as an IT specialist at a small local government agency.  About a year after I started, the Director decided to update the agency’s website, my job was to test and launch the new website after it had been designed and developed.”

Challenge: “This was challenging because the website was 5 years old, used old technology, and no updates had been made since the original launch.  In addition, I was given only 2 weeks for testing and launching—there was a lot of pressure.”

Action: “I created a comprehensive testing strategy and schedule for reviewing all of the new website’s content and graphics.  I established daily check-ins with testers to ensure all timelines were met and all issues were identified and addressed.”

Result: “As a result of these efforts, I launched a new website within the timeframe allotted to update it.  Hits to the site have increased by 25% and our agency receives a lot of positive feedback on the new website. I have received requests from other local government agencies for advice on how they could update their sites.”

In an interview, using “I” is critical; if you were writing the above achievement for inclusion in your resume, it might look something like this:

In just 2 weeks [challenge], updated, tested, and launched a new website, overhauling a site [actions] that had not been updated in 5 years [challenge]. Hits to the site increased 25% within 90 days of launch [result].

September is International Update Your Resume Month!

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Because you never know when you’ll need to use your resume, September has been designated as International Update Your Resume Month as an annual reminder for job seekers (and those who may, at some point, be job seekers—which is all of us!) to review and update their resume, LinkedIn profile, and other career documents.

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Making Sure Your Resume Works in Applicant Tracking Software (ATS)

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Those of you venturing into the private sector for the first time should know that private sector resumes are much different than federal ones. One of the major differences is that virtually all private sector resumes are run through Applicant Tracking Software (ATS).

There is no industry standard for ATS. That being said, there are some commonalities across systems. Since you may be thinking about updating your private sector resume—or even creating your first private sector resume—in honor of International Update Your Resume Month, here are some things to know as you work on your private sector resume.

• Key words are king. Make sure that your resume reflects the key words for the position you are targeting, Not sure what the key words are? Try running the job announcement through a word cloud software.

• Do not put your name and contact information in the header or the footer. Not all ATS can read what you put in a header or a footer. Some ATS can but why take that chance?

• If you have a title such as PE, PhD, CEM or even Junior, you may want to leave it off your resume. You do not want the ATS to read your last name as PhD.

• Standardization is the way to go. Most ATS uses (and expects) standard section headers. This is not the time to get creative. Use headers such as Education, Work Experience, Certifications. Dates should be expressed as months and years. Many ATS calculate years of experience from dates and they need the months to do so accurately.

• Use Word and send your resume as a .doc if at all possible. Some ATS cannot read a PDF, JPG, or even .docx. If you are a Mac user, invest in Word for Mac (the real Word).

• Make sure that your email address, LinkedIn URL, and other links are not live. You do not want ATS to read your live link as a potential virus.

• For your experience headings, you should put Company, Location on one line and Job Title, Dates on a second line underneath the organization and location.

• Make sure the file name says more than “resume.” Instead, make your file name: Your Name, Job Title Applied For.

Take 5 min to Proofread Your Resume the Right Way

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Did you know September is International Update Your Resume Month? Likely not, but it’s a perfect time to proofread your resume. Proofreading is hard—and it’s especially difficult to proofread your own work. Despite the challenges, it is critical that your resume be perfect and, if you’re including a cover letter, that needs to be perfect too.

Asking someone else to proofread your document is a good strategy but make sure the person you ask has strong grammar, spelling, and editing skills. And of course, you want to proof your own documents.

Some tested strategies for proofreading include:
• Read your document slowly from beginning to end to check for typos and other errors.
• Run spell check (recognizing that spell check is far from perfect and will not pick up errors in word usage; for example, using manger when you meant manager.
• Read your document backwards, starting at the end and then reading right to left
• Read your document out loud
• Run your document through Grammarly.com or other similar software

Here are some other ideas to address common mistakes:

Check for Punctuation Issues:
• Put periods at the end of all full sentences
• Keep your punctuation consistent when using bullets
• Periods and commas belong within quotation marks
• One space after a period is the current standard (not two spaces, which is appropriate for typewriters—and you’re not using a typewriter for your resume, are you?

Check for Spelling Errors:
• Don’t rely on spell check—it will not catch homophones or wrong words that are spelled correctly
• Use a dictionary
• Put your resume away for a couple of days and then read it; some times a few days away will help you see errors that were invisible before

Check Capitalization:
• Capitalize the first word of every sentence and bullet point
• Capitalize names and other proper nouns. The names of cities, countries, companies, religions, and political parties are proper nouns, as are days, months, and holidays. Other proper nouns including nationalities, institutions, and languages
• Governmental matters should be capitalized (as an example, Congress but not congressional, US Constitution but not constitutional)
• Government agencies are capitalized but the words federal and state and not generally capitalized unless those words are part of an official title (like Federal Trade Commission but not federal regulations)
• Titles are capitalized when they are followed by a name unless the title is followed by a comma
• Titles are not capitalized if it is used after a name or instead of a name

Tense Tips:
• Former jobs should always be in past tense
• Accomplishments should always be in past tense

Typos and other errors can be the “kiss of death.” The above tips, while not all-inclusive, will help ensure that your resume, cover letter, and other career documents are error-free.

Easy Resume Updates

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In honor of International Update Your Resume Month, I am focusing this month on providing tips to update your resume. If you’re ready to spend an hour or two updating your resume, here are some things you can do:

• Remove positions that are more than 10 or so years old. Most resumes these days only go back 10 years since most employers want to know what you have done recently.

• Check the length; if you’re updating a private sector resume, make sure it does not exceed 2 pages; if you’re working on your federal resume, try to keep your resume to 4-7 pages.

• Make sure your resume is full of key words that reflect the kinds of positions you are targeting. And make sure your language is up-to-date. If you are in Information Technology, don’t call it Management Information Systems, as an example.

• Modernize your font. For federal resumes, think Times New Roman or Arial; for private sector resumes, think Calibri or another sans serif font. No one should be using Courier anymore—ever!

• Make sure you have white space to make your resume easy to read. And if your federal resume still uses only one long paragraph for every job, break it up into several smaller paragraphs. It will be more visually appealing, plus easier to read.

• Change all written numbers to numerals; use $ instead of dollars, % instead of percent, and M instead of million. This will make your resume more visually appealing, take up less room, and make those numbers stand out from all of your text.

• Update your training and technical skills. If you’re still showing Windows95, and training classes from the 1990’s and the early 2000’s, it’s time to move on. You do not need every single class ever taken or every single software or other technology you ever used.

• Remove your objective and references from your resume. These are both considered old fashioned. Employers are not interested in what you want; instead they want to know what you offer. And instead of including references on your resume, you should create a reference page and bring that with you to interviews (and leave it with your interviewers).

• Eliminate the term “responsible for” from your resume. Just because you’re responsible for something doesn’t mean you did it…it just means you should have done it! Start your sentences and bullet points with verbs. And don’t put “s” on the end of those verbs—keep your verbs strong and varied!