How to Make your Resume Scream “You Need Me”

To set yourself apart from the pile of resumes that crowd a hiring manager’s desk, it’s important to show what you have been able to accomplish in previous roles. A resume needs to answer the question of “what are you going to do for my company?”. How you answer that is by showing what your successes and accomplishments have been in your previous roles and responsibilities.

Creating an achievements section on the first page of your resume or under each of your previous jobs is a great way to do this.

Responsibility vs. Achievements

First off, understand the difference between responsibility and achievement.

Knowing the employer’s needs and outlining your strengths in your resume is a good start, but you MUST show the employer what sets you apart from hundreds of other applicants.

You may have a long list of work and education experiences in your resume but how do you prove to an employer that you are telling the truth?

By listing your achievements in a resume, you’ll be able to prove that you are a serious candidate, capable of living up to your most valuable features and delivering the set goals to go beyond what is required in your job.

– A job responsibility describes a task that your employer required and expected you to complete.

– An achievement describes the impact you made by fulfilling those tasks.

Describing your responsibilities only tells a potential employer what you were expected to do, it does not tell them what you did- in fact- do. Therefore, throughout your resume the emphasis must be on your achievements.

How to create achievements

Highlighting your daily tasks and what you do everyday makes your resume sound redundant and read like a job description. Provide the potential employer with a brief job description for each position, but then make the bulk of your resume about the impact you made with past employers.

By detailing the impact you made, you are also proving your value by giving specific examples of times you have demonstrated those qualities and made a difference to an employer. You can incorporate your achievements in your resume in short action-packed bullet points.

If you think that you did not really make much of an impact at your previous job, think again!

Chances are that you did. To identify your impact, ask yourself what challenges you faced at work. Think about how you handled them and what results you achieved.

Depending on the type of work you do, your impact may be very different, but you will always be able to find things to write about. Your future employer may not care about your responsibilities at your previous job because that offers them little insight into how you may impact them and their business.

Highlighting your achievements along with an employer-focused value proposition will surely get you noticed by the prospective employers.

Remember, your resume is not for you; it is to capture the imagination of future employers who will be reading your resume. For them to be able to imagine the impact that you will have on their business, you need to show them that you can make a real difference as you have in the past.

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