To be effective your CV, or curriculum vitae, needs to contain a clear list of what you've achieved in previous roles. Potential employers need to know what you have to offer and the best way of demonstrating this is by showing the contribution you have made in other organisations.
Here's an example. A company is looking for someone to take over the running of their payroll system. In the current economic climate they receive lots of applications, many from people who say they have run payroll systems for other businesses.
In this particular situation the employer knows their payroll system is in a bit of a mess and the associated employee records need reviewing. Applicants will stand out if they can say they've not only run payrolls, but they've helped firms to implement new systems or made a major improvement to payroll and HR operations.
How to Identify Achievements in Your Career
At first it can be hard to spot where you've made a real difference for your employers. You turn up to work every day, do a good job, and then go home. That doesn't sound very exciting material for a CV.
But take time to think about the different projects, formal or informal, you've been involved with. Perhaps you decided, or were asked, to improve the way the company filed certain types of documents. Or you created some spreadsheets to speed up the reporting process. Perhaps you were selected for a team that looked at improving a specific business process.
Then think of the benefits that you work brought to your organisation. How much time did you save by improving the filing? Can you find a way of describing the advantages brought by those new spreadsheets? Did your firm measure that business process improvement in financial terms?
It may be helpful to talk through your achievements with someone else. They can help you decide which brought the most benefit and the conversation may prompt recollection of other achievements that you had forgotten about.
The Importance of Quantifying Achievements
To make the biggest impression your achievements should have measurable benefits. Almost anyone can say they improved a specific business process by doing it more efficiently. But few can identify exactly what benefits they brought, particularly in financial terms.
The bigger the benefit, the more impressive it is. If you saving hundreds of thousands through your actions, or earned a huge amount for your business by winning deals, it'll look good on your CV. Obviously the amounts will depend on the context – saving thousands for a small firm is more impressive than saving the same amount for a large corporation.
It's a good idea to support your statements of achievements with a few notes on how you did it. For example, you might want to say that you won a major contract for your business, for a specific amount. You could expand this by adding that you overcame competition from larger businesses, or that it was the largest contract won that year, or that it was the first deal in a new business area.
Always keep your achievements truthful. You might not remember the exact amounts involved and need to make an educated guess. That's fine, but don't be tempted to over-embellish your career highlights.
Finally, remember that a CV is not the same thing as a job description. A job description is a statement of tasks and responsibilities while a CV is a key part of your personal marketing strategy.
Andrew Knowles - Experience is the author of authoritative writing. That's why I focus on subjects where I can say "been there, done that". As a ...
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