Page 205 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

Remember, this is not bragging.
These are facts.

If you really do have an accomplishment of such magnitude as the
one above, which statement would serve you better? Which state-
ment would help the interviewer to make the best decision about
your qualifications? While “I’m an excellent manager” is a fine
thing to say, it would be a lot stronger if it were supported by
statement B.
Interviewers these days want to hear specific data. If you
don’t provide the interviewer with concrete, quantified examples
of what you did, the interviewer will very likely ask you to. It’s
much more impressive to be prepared to offer them yourself,
without prompting. And in the opposite direction, it is most trou-
bling if the employer asks for examples of your skills and you
can’t think of any. To prevent being caught off guard this way,
you’ll want to prepare several Q statements (targeted to each spe-
cific job) before every interview. If you can learn how to quantify
your skills now, it will become an ingrained habit, at your com-
mand whenever you need to use it.
Let’s take a look at the structure and content of some other
concrete, quantified statements:

• Since I’ve become the director of operations, I’ve been
responsible for helping the company to decrease waste by
20 percent, resulting in an overall savings of $1.2 million
a year.
• I ran a bicycle sales and repair store with 17 employees
and gross annual sales of $193,000.
• I operated a multiline phone system and personally han-
dled over 200 calls per day.
• Since I took over as the CEO of this pharmaceuticals
company, we have gone from number 347 to number
197 in the list of Fortune 500 companies.
• As a program manager, I instituted and developed a pro-
duction process that increased profits by 42 percent in
the second quarter.

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