As you climb your career mountains, you will accomplish a series of goals relevant to your role and industry. However big or small these are relevant to not just your work they are relevant to you personally. Why? Because these form the quantifiable achievements that turn a great resume into an exceptional resume.
The definition of quantifiable is something that is able to be expressed or measured as a quantity. This could include achievements such as revenue growth, cost savings, social media growth, improvements in energy efficiency and growth in customer satisfaction.
What happens is that as we progress through our career we will achieve many great things and be involved in many great projects. But as time progresses, as with most things, we forget the smaller details and just remember the overall achievement. We don't remember the actual numbers or the overall size and scope of the project and when the time comes that you need to update your resume, you simply can't remember the detail which is so important.
My advice (and I wish someone had told me to do this when I started out!), write them down, record voice notes in your phone, whatever is the best way for your to bank these achievements as they occur. That way when the time does come to update your resume all the detail is there at your fingertips!
These achievements lift the bar in your resume, turning it from a list of responsibilities (which are also important to outline) into a series of accomplishments. They give meaning and greater context to your resume. So let me give you an example from my own:
One of my responsibilities in the past was to manage and deliver the strategy for the business social media pages. So rather than simply saying I was responsible for the delivery of social media strategy for the business, I incorporated the detailed results of what I achieved:
Organically tripled the business Facebook followers by over 400% to over 15,000 within the first 18 months of appointment and launched the business Instagram page, achieving over 2.7K followers within 2 years.
This provides the reader context in regards to the responsibility and clearly shows that the strategy implemented was effective.
If you are worried that you cannot remember exact detail, spend a couple of hours (with a great coffee in hand!) and just start noting down what you remember, you will find as you do this (as what happens when my clients and I start working back and forth on their resume) that detail will start coming back to you. If you cannot remember the exact percentages or dollar figures that is ok, round it to the nearest whole number or percentage on the conservative side (e.g. round a 16.3% increase to 15%).
But going forward, grab a notepad and pen or the trusty smart phone and start documenting.
Cheers,
Lucy xx