Throughout your career, you’ll develop skills, overcome obstacles and obtain achievements that will demonstrate your value as an employee. Although this may not necessarily fall under “job responsibilities” you should still include these accomplishments on your resume. Here’s how to do so.

Track Your Accomplishments As You Go

Keeping track of your career accomplishments as they occur is critical. If you fail to record them when they’re relevant, you may forget some of those achievements or skills. So to avoid this, treat your resume as a living document, and as you reach those milestones or accomplishments, update your resume accordingly.

Analyze Your Accomplishments

If you’re unsure of what type of accomplishments/skills/obstacles to include on your resume, ask yourself what you have done that yielded a result. For example, what did you develop and what problem did it solve? What outcomes have you generated? Did you receive and promotions, awards or gain more responsibilities? Have you implemented something new for the company to improve success, sales, awareness, efficiency?  Did you increase revenue, and by how much (numerical value)? What processes or procedures did you improve/augment? What makes you unique to the business? What projects did you work on that were important to you? Next, construct your statements answering these questions.

Construct Your Statements

When it comes to constructing your statements, ask yourself, what was the challenge, what did I implement/action did I take, and what was the result?  This will ensure each accomplishment or skill you address touches on all the key points. An example would be, “Improved daily productivity by implementing a calendaring schedule system”. Or if you can use statistics, you can say something such as, “Decreased expenses by .5% by assessing current usage and cutting out unnecessary costs”.

Include Challenges/Obstacles

You can also include any challenges or failures you faced, and how you adapted, learned and overcame them. Whether it was a positive outcome or an unsuccessful one, both are significant in establishing value, as they describe your talent, and your ability to adapt, learn and grow.

What Not to Include

Before you begin listing out your accomplishments, there are some that you should leave off your resume. For example, you should avoid including outdated or “overexaggerated/fabricated accomplishments” as well as accomplishments that divulge confidential information. Here’s more on what not to include on your resume.

 

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