How to post your accomplishments on your resume to impress HR
Miscellaneous / / November 10, 2021
A simple listing is not enough.
In describing your professional experience, it is important not only to list what you did, but also to tell how you did it. Modest mentions of success won't win over the recruiter - they need to offer a real story.
The art of self-presentation is very important to a career, says Stephanie Sward-Williams, an entrepreneur and lecturer. She created the whole platform F * ck Being Humble. “To hell with humility!”) To teach people to be proud of their achievements. Her book “To hell with modesty! How to overcome insecurity and start promoting yourself ”talks about this in detail. With permission from Alpina Publisher, Lifehacker publishes an excerpt from the second chapter.
When you look closely at the ongoing struggle between Apple and Samsung to dominate the mobile phone market, you will find that Samsung products are superior in quality and performance to Apple products, but many of us prefer not to believe. For all the annoying iPhone problems (low battery, limited memory, breakable screens) Samsung has solutions.
But there is one thing that Samsung has failed to perfect: it's the ability to win hearts, not minds. While Samsung is campaigning to flood Times Square with billboards with glossy pretty pictures and the slogan Do Bigger Things. “Do More”), Apple Shares Awesome photographsfilmed by their clients showing how the product has allowed them to actually "do something more." Samsung says Apple shows.
Why is this example instructive? You see, I always meet people who talk about what they do, not why they do it so well. Again, it all comes down to modesty and our inability to acknowledge or even remember our own contributions to the project. Thus, women are better at recognizing talent in others than in themselves.
Social psychologist Adam Galinski calls this the “mother-bear effect”: women protect others, so they don't look selfish, while men tend to overestimate their results by about 30% (according to researchMen’s Honest Overconfidence May Lead to Male Domination in the C – Suite / Columbia Business School Columbia University Business Schools). Well done, men! This clearly works for you. Women, learn from the experience!
Too often, we focus on commenting rather than storytelling. We're talking about the plot itself, not why it increased revenue by 50%. And we do not mention that if it were not for our participation, there would be no repeated orders, the project would not look so attractive, and the company would not proudly set our work as an example.
Are you stiff with fear of appearing to be a creep? But this is an exercise in formulating your own achievements intended for something else: it's about seeing your own contribution to a common cause and figuring out how best to tell about it.
At 16, I worked for Barratts Shoes (a British shoe retailer far from glamor) and we were forced to sell shoe care products. Know these suede protective sprays that no one wants to buy? Well, if we turned out to be the worst sellers of the "remedy of the day", we had to vacuum the sales floor. Now I'm not sure if it was legal, but I still did it for about eight weeks in a row.
Once I got tired of lugging a vacuum cleaner over an obstacle course in the sales area, and I decided to study in detail the shoe care products. Just name it, and I already know that! And this became not just an addition to the act of sale and purchase, but its "chip". I studied all the troubles that can befall a shoe if you do not smear it with one or another means, and chose a specific problem that needs to be solved, depending on the buyer.
Eventually I became a leading seller of shoe care products and my hugging walks vacuum cleaner have sunk into the past. While this was not a career-changing turning point, I still tell this story in today's interviews because it reflects my understanding of dedication and purpose. It's not about how I became a sales leader, but about the path I took to get where I wanted.
So let's see how you can insert a professional example into your resume and improve it by moving from commenting to storytelling. Let's say you wrote:
How not to write about yourself
I directed the creation of a promotional brochure for the university, including photography, design and replication.
No doubt, the information is true, but it is presented too literally. And it does not explain why it was your participation that influenced the project in which you were engaged, or businessin which you worked.
By giving an example of your work, you should make it clear what exactly was involved in project management. How tight were the deadlines? How much work was it? How did this affect the client or company you worked for? What have you done to surpass yourself? With this in mind, let's try again.
How to write about yourself
To compile a comprehensive overview of the university's proposals, I spent 17 interviews that determined the creative and meaningful direction of the prospectus and other brand communications. I also coordinated three shoots, managed external vendors and provided the client with a databank containing over 300 pieces of content.
Do you see the difference? By describing the process of working on a product you are proud of, you immediately increase your engagement and highlight points that you know will impress the reader. This does not mean that when you are asked about the latest project, you have to remember every little thing, but thinking about them is a great way to make sure you're ready to share them at any time.
It looks like a meeting with former a lover who asks how you are doing. Answering “okay” will certainly not impress him or make him throw himself back into your arms. But after 10 minutes, you’ll remember a million different things that you did and that you could brag about, and everything would sound much better than “normal”.
It is worth writing down all the interesting things that you have done recently, so that you will always be ready. By turning the experience into a story, you will interest your readers in it and you yourself will begin to realize your value and speak more clearly about it. This is important not only in cases where you need to fill an awkward silence on interview or presentation, but also for the recognition and money you deserve.
The way in which you will record your own contribution, choose at your discretion. But if you only record your accomplishments when you are about to apply for a new job, or contact a potential client, then you risk missing something important, something that demonstrates your capabilities.
Just in case, I would recommend doing monthly reviews that make it clear what is going well, what can be improved and what lessons can be learned.
The more you meditate, the fresher your accomplishments will be, and you won't miss the opportunity to share them when the moment comes.
If you don't do that yet, that's okay. As I said at the beginning of the book, if you were not taught to talk about yourself, where did you get the ability to do it well? If the world was perfect, someone would constantly tell you about all the amazing things that you can do; but in reality this kind of analysis is possible only if you yourself are not too lazy to figure out why your skill is truly unique.
If you want to overcome shyness and stop being afraid of self-promotion, "Fuck shyness!" will definitely come in handy for you. Sword-Williams tells inspiring life stories, shares practical advice, and even provides easy exercise routines.
To buy a bookRead also🧐
- What to answer in an interview when asked to tell about yourself
- "Is it written in my resume like that?" What not to say in an interview
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