Accomplishments for Resume

When your trophies are placed together under a separate Accomplishments heading , the accomplishments resume format materializes. Instead of grouping accomplishments with the associated employer.

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Typically, the accomplishments for resume follows your Objective or Qualifications Summary. Following the Accomplishments section is an employment summary, with little or no description of your responsibilities, and dates sometimes omitted.

Use Impact Statements to Portray Yourself as the Right Fit

You, too, can have a great deal of flexibility in forming and fashioning your resume. In all likelihood, you could make a difference in a variety of positions and companies. To portray yourself as the right fit, carefully select and strategically position information that is relevant to the position or company.

Remember that this is your marketing piece, unique to your dreams and goals, your value proposition, and your brand. Just as your gene pool is unique to humankind, your work history and accomplishments for resume are unique to you. Although your background may be similar to other candidates, your resume shouldn’t cause readers to wonder whether you have an identical twin.

resume accomplishments

The best way to distinguish yourself from the crowd of candidates is through the use of definitive impact statements (resume accomplishments) that spell value and emphasize your personal brand. As you finish developing your impact statements using the tools and tips in this webpage, the construction of your career story is nearing completion.

Resume accomplishments examples and tips

An Accomplishments Format Worked for Leonart: Leonart, a retailer for a Washington–based retail chain, had a great list of accomplishments for resume, backed by verifiable facts. By grouping the accomplishments together and placing them at the visual center of the page, she looked unbeatable on paper. See Leonart’s accomplishments for resume above.

  • Offered a positive attitude and flexibility in work hours.
  • Operated stores in the highest volume district in our region.
  • Considered to be one of the top performing store managers in the district.
  • Assisted in store setup and grand opening of Dollar Tree store 3900 in Richmond, VA.
  • Won Top Gun sales contest for margin increase in 3rd Quarter 2013.
  • Increased overall store sales by 17% in store 184 by providing customers exceptional personalized service and outstanding shopping experience in store.
  • Developed and maintained excellent customer relationships and offered exceptional customer service increasing customer’s’ satisfaction and customer loyalty.
  • Supervised the sales team in the daily performance of the department, supported and trained new hires and assisted the team at peak hours.
  • One of the only Store Managers in the district able to consistently meet company expectations in regards to acceptable payroll figures.

Strengths

  • Positions your strongest selling points front-and-center.
  • Unearths buried accomplishments from long ago.

Weaknesses

  • Limits the space you might use to flesh out details of your past responsibilities.
  • Won’t work as well if you’re short on accomplishments or in a profession that’s difficult to quantify.

Strategies for Presenting Accomplishments

To help you communicate your commitment to the employer’s bottom line, consider one or more of these resume-writing trade secrets.

Use Company’s Mission Statement as your own.

Mission-linking, or tying your value to the company’s mission statement, is a unique technique for connecting with a prospective employer. To do so, you’ll need to know what the company’s mission statement is. Corporate public relations departments can provide this information, as can the company’s Web site.

After you have researched the company’s mission statement, begin thinking about how your experience or professional aspirations apply to the company’s goals, purposes, or values. You can work mission-linking into your focus statement at the top of the resume or weave it into the introductory paragraphs of a cover letter.

The importance of Comparison

In communicating, we often use comparisons to help make our point. Careful use of comparisons can help convey that you can run faster, jump higher, and leap tall buildings in a single bound better than the next candidate. For instance, this impact statement tells only half the story.

Proceed with caution when you compare yourself with a team member or predecessor, respected or otherwise. Such comparisons can be offensive, so it is best in these cases to stick with a comparison to industry averages, other branches, or competitors.

Original Resume Accomplishment: Improved branch ranking for sales volume to #1.

Improved Resume Accomplishment

Comparisons with the location average: As branch’s sole account executive, improved sales production 42% and increased branch ranking from #12 to #1 in a 15-branch region.

Comparisons between competitors: Improved sales production 42% and increased company’s market share from #2 to #1.

Comparisons with the industry average: Improved sales production 42%, well above national average of 8%.

Comparisons with the company average: Improved sales production 42%, the largest annual sales increase in the company’s 12-year history.

Comparisons with your predecessor in the position: Improved sales production 42% in a territory that had experienced declining sales and negligent account service.

The importance of Numbers

Numbers, unlike words, are universal, no matter what the reader’s business idiom or corporate culture is. Note how the lack of numbers in this maintenance director’s impact statement creates confusion about whether the statement is even an accomplishment.

Original Resume Accomplishment: Implemented preventative maintenance program that improved downtime.

Improved Resume Accomplishment: Improved production 19% and reduced assembly-line downtime from 7 to .5 hours per week through implementation of preventive-maintenance program.

The Return On Investment

ROI is another effective tool to quantify your value to employers. The acronym stands for return on investment and is a term companies use to determine how quickly their investment in new equipment or advertising or an expansion will pay for itself.

With your new perspective you can concentrate on generating a return on your employer’s investment in salary, benefits, training, office space, business cards, and all of the other hidden costs associated with hiring you. Some professions can more easily show a return than others, specifically those that directly affect revenue generation or expense controls. For instance, a top sales performer can show that a $150,000 salary will be justified by her ability to bring in half a million dollars in sales. Here are more examples that demonstrate ROI on a resume.

A purchasing manager can imply that his past record of negotiating impressive vendor concessions will validate his salary requirements, which happen to be 20 percent more than what the company paid its last purchasing manager. The following impact statements might guarantee his standing as the number-one candidate, despite his higher salary demands.

  • Negotiated more than $300,000 in vendor concessions.
  • Reduced transportation costs 20%, or $95,000 per year.