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Executive Resume Writing Secrets: Lead Your Achievement Statements With the WOW Result
By Meg Guiseppi | September 24, 2008
To capture attention and drive home your promise of value to your next employer, follow these suggestions when crafting bulleted statements describing critical contributions you’ve made to past employers:
→ For optimum impact, lead with the WOW result, instead of the actions you took to get there.
→ Monetize or quantify the WOW result whenever possible. Numbers speak volumes.
→ Link your personal brand attributes with your value proposition and ROI.
→ Keep each statement concise (3-4 lines at most) and to-the-point, surrounded by enough white space to make each one really pop.
→ Because space on a 2-page executive resume is at a premium, choose only your most impressive accomplishments to showcase your value proposition.
→ Group together no more than 5 achievement statements in a row. A list with too many bulleted items is dizzying for the reader.
→ Position a few of your most powerful achievement statements above the fold on the first page of your executive resume.
→ Replace lifeless, overused phrases like “responsible for” with robust actions verbs like:
Drove, propelled, launched, maximized, benchmarked, generated, innovated, monetized
Which of these achievement statements for a CEO – Global Operations Management do you think packs the best punch?
Before
“Responsible for process improvements in each department, resulting in increased revenue, cost reductions and better quality metrics.”
After
“Increased revenue 28%, improved quality metrics 33%, and reduced costs over 25% spearheading continuous process improvements across all global business units (IT, HR, P&L, Accounting, Administration, Legal, and Customer Service).”
For many more strategic executive resume writing tips, see
Think Like an Executive Resume Branding Expert
Topics: Career Management Best Practices, Executive Branded Resumes, Personal/Leadership Branding, Secrets of Executive Resume Branding, The Executive Job Search | No Comments »
September 24th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I especially like the first point. Sometimes I’ll ask a job seeker to write an achievement starting with the action he or she took to achieve a result. Then we flip the two parts of the sentence around to put the result first. It’s a great way to make a splash!
For instance, “Hired three new managers, which resulted in 80% increase in sales.” Flipped around, that achievement becomes, “Increased sales 80% by hiring three new managers.” That’s a grabber!
September 25th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Thanks for commenting, Susan.
Leading with the WOW is a simple tactic that grabs attention and makes for more interesting reading, I think.
-Meg
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:09 am
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May 25th, 2009 at 11:29 am
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