roadmap to job search successd2uibt7wqz1aji.cloudfront.net/jsr/roadmap1.pdf · see what i mean:...

http://careerconfidential.com/training-webinars/

1

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me


2

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

Of all the changes and upgrades you could make to your resume, quantifying it is

maybe the most important change of all. If there ever were a ‘one best thing’ you

could do to your resume to make it more effective and more powerful for you,

quantifying would be it. Today we’re going to talk about what it means to

quantify your resume, why it’s vital for your success, and how to do it. And I’m

going to give you lots of examples so that you can understand exactly what I’m

talking about.

What is quantifying? When I say

quantifying, I mean quantifying

your accomplishments…which

means describing your

accomplishments in terms of

numbers, dollars, or percentages.

Why is that so important? It’s because companies care about those numbers.

Why do they care? Managers care because they make virtually all of their

decisions based on numbers. Their decisions are driven by the data they collect

from all kinds of sources about all aspects of their businesses. All businesses

make decisions based on profit, loss, cost, efficiency, time…and guess what? It all

boils down to the money or REVENUE. They only care about the revenue they

generate as a business. If they can’t make money, then no one can work there

anyway, right?


3

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

So if you want to strip this down to the cold, hard, truth…it really doesn’t matter

how amazing you are at writing, designing, creating, communicating, and

managing, whatever it is. The only thing that matters is: Can you help them make

money? Can you help them cut costs? Be more productive? Make more sales? Be

more efficient (because time equals money)? It all comes down to the money,

baby. If you are successful at showing them how you can help them make money,

save money, or save time which equals money, then you are in a very good place

and they are going to want to hire you.


4

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

And the very first place you start telling them how you can help them make

money or save money as a company is in your resume. They are looking for that

performance data on your resume just like they look for data when they analyze

and evaluate their day-to-day actions. That’s where they’re going to take notice

of you and decide that they want to talk to you in an interview.

Most of the people that I talk to every day who are struggling in the job search

don’t do a good enough job at this. They are failing in the job search because

they don’t communicate their value to employers through their resume.

But I want you to succeed in a big way in the job search, so let’s talk about how to

quantify your resume so that you can grab the attention of hiring managers with

your resume. It will truly be a marketing document for you because it will clearly

demonstrate the value you can bring and why they should want to talk to you to

find out more.


5

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

So what exactly are you quantifying in your resume? You are quantifying your

accomplishments. Those bullet points under each job you’ve had should include

some of your most important accomplishments…what you did while you worked

at that company.

What kinds of things are

we talking about? Any

way you contributed to

revenue, growth, or profit

for the company. Think

revenue, rankings, direct

reports, production,

accuracy, budget,

projects, schedule,

turnover rate, and

procedures.

Let’s go through them one

at a time, and I’ll give you examples of what I’m talking about.


6

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

Revenue – How much customer cash were you

responsible for? Did you increase sales? By how much?

Either a dollar amount or a percentage works here. And

in what kind of time frame did you do it?

If you can say that you consistently grew sales for the last

5 years, you would quantify that by including how much

those sales went up: “I consistently grew sales by 22% per year over the last 5

years.”

If your job was to bring in new clients for your company, most people would put

that on their resume: “Responsible for bringing in new clients.” But you want to

quantify it and say how many you brought in: “I brought in 20 new clients in 3

months.”

Rankings – This is especially great for sales jobs. Where did you rank in

comparison to your peers? That comparison is very important.

See what I mean: “Top-ranked sales rep” is good. “#1 sales rep in my company”

is better. “#1 sales rep out of 34 reps” is the best.

If you’re a new graduate, this works well when describing your GPA and class

rank, too. (But only if your GPA is very good) An OK resume would talk about

how you were on the Dean’s List, but a great resume would say that you

“Maintained 3.7 GPA over 4 years or you ranked “#3 in class of 432.”

Direct Reports – Did you have anyone reporting to you? How many people? You

don’t want to just say, “I led a team,” you want to say, “I managed a team of 6

people.” If you don’t say how many people, it looks a little bit like you’re maybe

exaggerating the size of your team.


7

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

Production – Maybe you’re in some kind of manufacturing job. While it’s

important to talk about what you make and the processes you use to do it, you

can go one step further and add some numbers. Talk about how many widgets

you made. Talk about how fast you made them. Talk about how low your scrap

rate or reject rate was. If whatever you made was a complicated part that kept

your production rates low because it took so long to make it, talk about how

many steps it took: “Maintained 0% scrap rate in 37-step process to make X

part.”

Accuracy – Are you in a technical field where accuracy matters a lot? Maybe you

work with data or in some kind of a science or medical lab.

So instead of saying, “I was responsible for maintaining accuracy in the company

database,” you would be more specific: “I achieved 100% accuracy in a 50,000-

item database over 2 years.” You’ve given the rate of how accurate you actually

were, the size of the database or project you worked on, and the length of time

you maintained that. That gives them a much clearer, stronger picture of the

skills you’re bringing to this job and the kind of work they can expect from you.

Budget – Budgets are natural areas for quantification, because they are all about

the numbers, anyway. So instead of saying, “Responsible for X Department


8

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

Budget,” say how large the budget was: “Oversaw $1

Million Dollar budget for X Department.”

Lots of project-based jobs can incorporate budget

numbers into their descriptions, and you should look for

ways to indicate how large a budget you worked with

and how often you stayed within that budget:

“Averaged 5 projects per year with $500,000 budget each.” Or, “Completed 117

projects on-time and within strict budget guidelines of X dollars each.”

Projects – Projects are another really easy area to incorporate numbers, dollars,

and percentages into the description. How large was the project? What kind of

budget did you have? What kind of timeline or schedule did you follow? Did you

get it done on time? What were the results of the project?

Here’s a good example from someone in marketing who was responsible for

leading a national launch of a new product:

“Led 3-company co-promotion effort (1200 persons). Spearheaded marketing

development and national launch of new X with $30 million launch budget that

resulted in a $500 million global brand.”

That says how many companies were involved and how many people, which

shows the scope of the project, the dollar amount of the budget they were in

charge of, and the results of the project, which in this case were especially

impressive.

Schedule – Schedules are great places to bring in numbers because time is

money. If you can save time or increase efficiency for a company, you have just

made them more money.

“Responsible for delivering product on time” is not nearly as good as telling them

how often you were able to do that: “98% on-time delivery over 2 years”


9

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

That’s a much better, more accurate representation of the benefits of having you

around. That kind of delivery rate keeps customers happy and keeps the money

coming in.

Turnover Rate – Maybe under your leadership, the turnover rate in your division

went down, which speaks to your management abilities. Lower turnover rates

mean companies don’t have to spend that time and effort looking for new hires to

fill roles. Instead, those people can keep doing the things that make money.

So a good point here might be: “Decreased turnover rate from 20% to 10% over

18 months.” You’re giving them the percentage and the time it took to do it.

Procedures – Maybe you wrote a procedure that saved the company time or

effort. You could say, “I came up with a procedure that reduced a 14-step process

to a 6-step process, saving 25 minutes per event.” You want to say what it was,

what it did, and what the results were.

I hope you see that in just about every instance you can think of, there is some

way to describe that in terms of numbers, dollars, or percentages. There has to

be some way, because if you weren’t making money, saving

money, or saving time which equals money for that

company, they would have no use for that role at all.

There is some way that what you have done in every job you

had translates into numbers, dollars, or percentages. That’s

the way you want to describe those accomplishments on

your resume, as much as you can.

It will take some time and effort on your part to go back through your own

records and tally up these numbers. But the payoff you’ll get from it will blow

your mind. When hiring managers see these numbers on your resume, and they


10

Ro

adm

ap t

o J

ob

Sea

rch

Su

cces

s |

How

to

Qu

anti

fy Y

ou

r R

esu

me

can see the value that you provide as an employee, they will be so much more

likely to pick up the phone to talk to you.

Additional Resources for You:

Job Search and Interview Training Webinars


Career Confidential Products

http://careerconfidential.com/job-search-tools/

Peggy’s Personal Coaching

http://www.phcconsulting.com/WordPress/interview-coaching/

Total Access Club (TAC)

http://careerconfidential.com/total-access-club-product-reviews/




http://careerconfidential.com/job-search-tools/







roadmap to job search successd2uibt7wqz1aji.cloudfront.net/jsr/roadmap1.pdf · see what i mean:...

Documents