Page 207 - 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

Notice that the results are specific, concrete, and measurable. And
notice that they all, at the bottom line, lead to some sort of direct
benefit or monetary profit to the company.
There are five ways to quantify your accomplishments:

1. By numbers of people, places, things, units, or actions,
such as “handled 200 telephone calls per day.”
2. By amounts of money saved or earned, such as
“$300,000 savings” or “$100,000 in profits.”
3. In percentages (or fractions), such as “70 percent de-
crease in waste,” or “33 percent increase in production.”
4. By time saved, which usually means money saved.
5. By a subjective or objective scale or rank, such as “4.8 on
a scale of 1 to 5 for increased customer satisfaction” or
“moving from number 360 to number 121 on the
Fortune 500 list.”

Quality or Quantity?

Of course, it would be absurd to try to quantify every single one
of your tasks or accomplishments. Still, at the very least, you can
be qualitatively specific. For example, instead of simply saying,
“I’m multilingual,” you could say, “I am fluent in French,
Spanish, and Chinese.” Or, instead of saying that your artwork
has been shown in “many galleries,” you might say that your
work has been shown in “galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Santa Fe, Denver, and New York.”
Other statements that do not need to be quantified to convey
the weight of accomplishment would be the following:

• I won an award for being the employee of the year.
• I’m president of the Society for Historical Research.
• I graduated with highest honors.
• My customers have described me as dependable, honest,
and fair.
• My last boss would describe me as dynamic, innovative,
and creative.

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