Page 155 - Marky Stein - Fearless Career Change_ The Fast Track to Success in a New Field (2004)

The Accelerated Job Search

• Introduced an on-site safety program that decreased workers’
compensation claims by 18 percent in one year.
• Processed more than 250 customer requests daily.
• Won an award for decreasing materials costs from $6.41 per
inch to $5.20 per inch.
• Instrumental in increasing customer satisfaction (on a scale
of 1 to 10) from 3.0 to 7.5.

Once you start thinking of your job responsibilities as measurable
accomplishments, Q statements will come easily to you and you can
incorporate them into your résumé. It’s not always possible to use a
Q statement to describe what you did, but, no matter how small the
accomplishment, there is usually a way to find a quantifiable value to
include on your résumé. Take a look at how Q statements are incor-
porated into the sample résumé. Take a few moments now to write a
first draft of your résumé using the sample résumé as your guide.
This résumé checklist will ensure that your résumé is sharp,
powerful, and influential to the reader:

❑ The objective is crisp and concise. Just a job title if possible.
❑ Your summary presents a powerful picture, in just a few sec-
onds, of what you can do.
❑ The bulleted statements are quantified wherever possible.
❑ The years only (and not the months) of employment are
included.
❑ If you had more than one title at the same company, you place
the cumulative years you were at the company at the top on the
same line as the name of the company and the years you were
in each different position next to the name of the job title in
parentheses. (See sample résumé, “Anderson’s Nursery”).
❑ Going back into the job history more than 10 years is avoided.
(This is true except in cases wherein a job more than 10 years
ago has information that directly pertains to the job for which
you’re now applying.)
❑ Dates of college graduation are omitted. (In case the employer
makes a judgment that you are too young or too old for the
position.)

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