Guest Author - Kristen Welcome

Most job searchers have heard the advice that they should make their resume stand apart from their competition by including not only their job duties at previous jobs, but also including ways that they had benefited previous employers. However, many job seekers are not certain how to incorporate their accomplishments into a resume format. Here are a few ideas to incorporate your major achievements into your resume.

First, identify what accomplishments you’d like to include. Accomplishments are different from the job duties you performed while you held a position. While your job duties detail the actions you performed at work, your accomplishments are one-time, quantifiable achievements that benefited your employer. For example, “managed day-to-day running of branch sales operations” would be a job duty. “Saved law firm approximately $100,000 by minimizing usage of outside employment agencies and utilizing local contacts to recruit qualified candidates” would be an accomplishment. Any time you saved your employer time or money, received an award or special title, founded a new program or performed another one-time special activity that sets you apart from your peers, this is an accomplishment that could potentially be included in your resume.

After you’ve assembled your list of accomplishments, consider which format should be used to showcase your accomplishments. If you have three or more accomplishments and you would like to highlight them as much as possible, consider creating a new section in your resume just for your accomplishments. You can call this section “Selected Career Accomplishments,” “Selected Achievements,” “Achievements and Awards,” or any other title that is appropriate. The achievements should be included in bulleted sentences just like the job duties in your Professional Experience section. You can either note the employer for whom you achieved the accomplishment at the end of the sentence parenthetically, or you can create sub-categories for different employers within the Accomplishments section. The Accomplishments section can be positioned high up in your resume, usually directly under the “Qualifications” or “Objective” section.

If you have fewer accomplishments or if you would prefer to emphasize your job experiences over these achievements, you can instead create miniature Accomplishment sections for each employer within the Professional Experience section. To do this, lay out your Professional Experience section as usual, with the name and city of an employer, dates of employment, and your title, followed by a bulleted list of job duties. Directly under the job duty list, in same-sized font, create an underlined or bold heading called “Selected Accomplishments,” and then add the bulleted accomplishments in the same format as your job duties.

Remember that hiring managers often verify claims in application materials by contacting former employers. Therefore, if you believe that you former employer would disagree with the amount of money you saved the company, or if they disagree with the importance of the achievement, it may be best not to include it. Even if it initially impressed a hiring manager, it would not be worth it if they later believed you to be a liar when your previous manager has no recollection of your accomplishment.

Finally, remember that you can also use your accomplishments in your cover letter, particularly as you describe the ways that you could benefit a potential employer in a new job. When competition is fierce, career highlights such as these can make the difference between catching a hiring manager’s attention and being overlooked.



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