And here is a step by step written out:
1. Action: There’s a great list of action verbs at Quint Careers. You can use a few of those or think up your own. But make sure that your leading words suggest movement, ownership and leadership.
2. Relevant Topic: What does your target company care about? What do you know about the role this person will play? With a solid knowledge of your likely audience, you can focus on the right topics.
3. Impact: You need a word here that clearly states what happened. In this case, something got reduced. And that is a good thing. Make sure the positive impact you had is clearly stated.
4. Key Metric: What was impacted? Make sure that metric is also relevant and measurable in the way your industry defines it. In an economy where budgets are heavily scrutinized, your ability to measure and report will be important. No matter what your role is in the company.
5. Benefit: Accomplishment statements need numbers. Something tangible like a % increase/decrease, $ revenue up or $ cost down. And you can strengthen the benefit by adding a second short sentence to answer the “so what” question. In this case, you could add: “BENEFIT: Delivered new revenues 6 months sooner than expected.” That’s a nice surprise.
So what if you charted out your key accomplishments like this? Sound like a lot of work? I’ll bet if you do it for a few, you’ll get the idea. And have this structure in your mind as you write or re-write the rest.
What are your favorite action words?