Writing a solid resume has never been easy. In a way, it has to have that balance between clear and concise as well as pizzazz; on making sure that it stands out from the crowd and never bland.
Moreover, you need to understand that your resume is a marketing document, not necessarily viewed only as a historical record. Furthermore, your career goals have to determine which parts of your story to highlight and also which to minimize.
The essential part is to give heavier emphasis to your credentials, experiences, and accomplishments that relate to your objective and less to things that don’t. And another essential part is to understand the importance of action statements (to write your past experiences that resulted in your achievement[s]) in your resume. And that also means on how you write it appealingly in a sense of content base and not necessarily in attributes.
When you’re drafting or editing your resume, do ask yourself what actions you took to accomplish your achievement. The key is: support your verb with context and wrap your statement up with results.
Here are some examples:
On leading a Project:
Mediocre: Led a group of five people
Better: Led a group of five people in a digital marketing taskforce
Excellent: Led a specialized task force of five people in planning and executing several digital marketing initiatives and strategies, resulting in an increase of 5% in market share
Here’s another one:
On saving employees’ time and increasing their productivity level (in HR areas):
Mediocre: Responsible for administrative duties
Better: Assisted HR/GA Head with administrative procedures to save time
Excellent: Assisted the HR/GA Head, together by successfully created and implemented office scale administrative protocols/SOPs, streamlining the procedures concisely, and therefore increasing employees productivity
As you may notice on these two examples that the difference between a regular “jotted down” resume vs utilizing an action statement is very obvious. Your resume will be much more impactful, outstanding, and eye-catching to be digested further by the hiring managers/recruiters. Choose a strong verb, support with context and if possible, follow with the impact of said action.
Good luck!
