Showcase accomplishments in your resume

The fine line between your resume getting selected for an interview and lying among a pile of other job applications rests on how you present your work history – as a plain list of job duties or as a series of career achievements.

On an average, recruiters spend no more than 30 seconds in screening a resume, and in that time they look for information that will confirm their choice in the candidate. Make sure you catch the recruiter’s attention by going beyond routine details about your past jobs and draw focus to overall career highlights. Here’s how:

List your accomplishments, not duties

Your job title is descriptive enough for seasoned recruiters to understand tasks undertaken by you. Skip routine details about projects, and instead focus on the outcome of the same. Let your resume speak about what you are capable of achieving, and how your expertise can be beneficial to the organisation you wish to join. Use the space on the resume to provide them with reasons to shortlist and hire you on a higher pedestal, and not just base their decision on routine tasks of the past.

Are you leaving your last job on a high note?

For most job seekers, a job change is a time to seek better, more challenging opportunities. For a recruiter to consider you for a vacancy, it is important for him/her to see that your career graph is rising upward. You may expand the accomplishments in previously held jobs in greater detail:

For example, if you were a programmer in your last organisation, rather than writing ‘developed novel xyz programme’(which is an achievement in its own right), make it more impactful by phrasing it to include how the programme streamlined processes and introduced cost- and time effective methods of accomplishing tasks.

Link your work with company’s growth

Draw a correlation between your efforts and the company’s endeavours. Every job profile is created with some aspect of company’s growth in mind. When updating your resume and sending it out to prospective employers, be sure to highlight how your time on the job affected the company’s business in a positive manner.

Listing your accomplishments in the resume not only showcases your candidature in a stronger light, it will also reinforce confidence in you about your career track and allow you to objectively state your reasons for change along with your career aspirations to a potential employer.