Creating Strong Resume Wording

While talking about resumes the other night to a very bright group of job seekers, I had a mini epiphany.  I notice that when preparing their resumes, most people have trouble coming up with measurable, specific examples of their past achievements.  I'm telling you, so many of the resumes that I have seen look exactly like job descriptions and have phrases like, "Displays excellent communication skills" , "Utilizes project management tools", "Demonstrates leadership skills" ,"Innovative thinker".  Since these words don't tell me anything about a person's skill set, how are they going to make an impact to the hiring manager?
As we discussed the importance of measurable results, it dawned on me to relate creating resume statements to that of goal setting.  I asked the group how many of them participated in annual goal setting at their former companies.  The majority had.  Then I asked them how they went about it and basically, most of them followed the SMART acronym.  SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. We then took this and applied it to writing resume statements.  We decided that we didn't really need the A and the R (yaaaay, less steps!) but we certainly did need the S, M and T.  So what does that look like?

Specific: Make your resume impactful by being specific.  What did you do that made an impact? Let's say that you once managed a large domestic operating unit. Don't just say that.  Something like, "Manage $24MM US budget with influence on $43M North America unit expenditures with emphasis on improving total cost of ownership.  2010 accumulated cost savings of $1.1 M and projected 2011 savings of $584K" has more of an effect.

Measurable: Think of these words, "So what?" How were you acknowledged by your clients, did you have certain items published, did your excellent customer service skills save time or money?  In other words, what did your excellent skills result in?  Here’s an example, "Plan and schedule weekly shift work, conduct monthly quality control calls and correct service problems to ensure clients are satisfied with support and services resulting in a consistent completion rate of 98%." This is so much stronger than just, “Excellent customer service skills.”

Timely: Were you always ahead of the projected schedule, did you consistently make the target? Did something that you designed, developed or implemented save time for you, your organization or customer? An example is," Developed process validation and operating procedures for the start-up of a new pharmaceutical production facility ahead of scheduled implementation date resulting in a 20% increase in operating revenue.”

Can you see the difference? Think about goal setting when you write out your resume statements by asking yourself these three questions:

·         So what?

·         Resulting in what?

·         What was so special about that?

Don’t let your resume read like a job description or it may be passed by.