{"id":85648,"date":"2014-12-11T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T14:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85648"},"modified":"2014-12-10T19:24:10","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T01:24:10","slug":"how-to-list-your-accomplishments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/?p=85648","title":{"rendered":"How to List Your Accomplishments"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Diana La Femina, Senior Editor, INALJ Newfoundland and Labrador<\/a>, Northwest Territories<\/a>, New Brunswick<\/a>, Manitoba<\/a>, British Columbia<\/a>, Alberta<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

How to List Your Accomplishments<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"diana<\/a>In my last blog post<\/a> I talked at length about what should go into your resume. Now, I want to\u00a0discuss how to list accomplishments.<\/p>\n

You’ve heard it over and over again: you should quantify your experience at your jobs. But what\u00a0does that actually mean? It means that there should be two parts to each job\/position you list on\u00a0your resume. One should be your responsibilities – what tasks you performed, what was\/would\u00a0be listed on a job ad for your position. The second should be your accomplishments – what you\u00a0did for your company.<\/p>\n

To explicate further, a responsibility is “answered reference questions”, and an accomplishment\u00a0is “answered reference question via email, phone, and in person in a department with a rate of\u00a01,000 questions per month”. In the latter statement, you saying that you have a proven capability\u00a0to answer reference questions in a busy reference department. And THAT\u2019S what we\u2019re looking\u00a0for: proven capabilities.<\/p>\n

I guess the best way to define the difference is that a responsibility is something you theoretically\u00a0do, or the actual task you perform, while an accomplishment is how you perform that task. It’s\u00a0how you contribute to your workplace.<\/p>\n

With an accomplishment you’re going to use so-called “power words”: achieved, gained,\u00a0increased, decreased. You can look up lists of them online so I won’t take up space with them\u00a0here.<\/p>\n

There should be two parts to your accomplishment: what you accomplished, and how you\u00a0accomplished it. Make sure to list what you accomplished first; that’s the part that will grab a\u00a0reader\u2019s attention so you want the most impressive part first. So you should write:<\/p>\n

Saved company $10,000 per month by creating a more efficient system of ordering supplies\u00a0<\/em>
\nrather than:
\nCreated a more efficient system of ordering supplies, saving company $10,000 per month.<\/em><\/p>\n

You see which one sounds stronger? List the most impressive part first and the reader is more\u00a0likely to be drawn into reading how you accomplished the feat.<\/p>\n

Again, I can hear you saying, “But I haven’t accomplished anything!” Yes, you have. You’ve\u00a0done things at your positions, both past and present, which go beyond what you were supposed<\/em>\u00a0to do. To help start you off, think about these few points:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Did you ever receive praise or recognition for something? (This doesn’t need to be an\u00a0award, just someone acknowledging that you did a good job.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Were you asked to take on further responsibilities\/roles? (Such as training new hires,\u00a0help out with someone else’s responsibilities for a period of time; this shows you were\u00a0trusted.)<\/p>\n

\u2022 Did you complete a project?<\/p>\n

The easiest way I found to do this, at least in the beginning, is to find a list of \u201cpower words\u201d and\u00a0try to match them to each position on my resume. After a few times it starts to click.<\/p>\n

Try to list at least one accomplishment for each position, though three is ideal for me. List as\u00a0many as you need to and you can always edit some out or condense if you need to shorten your\u00a0resume.<\/p>\n

Hope this helps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Diana La Femina, Senior Editor, INALJ Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, New Brunswick, Manitoba, British Columbia, Alberta How to List Your Accomplishments In my last blog post I talked at length about what should go into your resume. Now, I want to\u00a0discuss how to list accomplishments. You’ve heard it over and over again: you…<\/p>\n

Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":74114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[6713,69,3592,3996,3666,3992,6486,5888,4391,6358,3667,112,4898,4886],"class_list":["post-85648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag-accomplishments","tag-article","tag-blog","tag-diana-la-femina","tag-inalj-alberta","tag-inalj-british-columbia","tag-inalj-labrador","tag-inalj-manitoba","tag-inalj-new-brunswick","tag-inalj-newfoundland","tag-inalj-northwest-territories","tag-resume","tag-resume-writing","tag-tracking-accomplishments"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/diana-la-femina.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WoMK-mhq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/74114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inalj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}