Responsibilities and Accomplishments in the Resume (Part 2)

This is a follow-up to an earlier posting I wrote titled Mixing Responsibilities and Accomplishments in the Resume.  In that posting I discussed how to make a clear distinction between responsibilities and accomplishments in the resume.  In this posting I'd like to mention why this is important, and why accomplishments are a better use of your resume real estate than responsibilities.

(this entire entry is cross-posted in my "main" blog which can be found here)

ABC Corporation                           Toronto, Canada

Director, Sales Department            4/2011 - present

- manage team of 8

- write annual sales plan for product line of entire company and aim to beat forecasts

- work closely with regional sales reps across North America and Europe

- responsible for making pricing strategies

What do we have as bullet point content here? Essentially, a lot of detail on what you would expect a Director of the Sales Department to have to manage.  In fact, if you were looking for a generic description of the prototypical Director of Sales, then here it is. This is good and fine, as it is clear and to the point and obviously this person is responsible to no small degree for the bottom line of the company based on whether or not she is been successful at her work.

The problem is this: has this person been successful? Is it possible for you, given the information provided, to assess how well she has done her job? The answer is no, and this can be very frustrating to the evaluator of a resume, who aims to understand how well the job has been done - not just what the job entails.  They want to evaluate your performance, but they cannot without understanding not only what you were supposed to do, but what you actually did. The key then is to convert a lot of bullet points to accomplishments.

ABC Corporation                           Toronto, Canada

Director, Sales Department            4/2011 - present

- Selected, based on accomplishment, to manage team of 8 selling the entire product line worldwide

- Developed annual sales plan for entire company product line and beat sales projections by 20% in FY2012

- Worked closely with regional sales reps across North America and Europe to increase sales in key markets (increased sales in North America by 15%) and develop new markets (created new business worth US$1M/year in France)

- Created new pricing strategies that allowed for penetration of key young adult demographic in the US

This, above, shows accomplishments. It is not written well (yet), but at the very least offers more information - namely the results of this person's efforts and hard work.  More can be done to highlight these accomplishments. For instance, this could be changed:

- Worked closely with regional sales reps across North America and Europe to increase sales in key markets (increased sales in North America by 15%) and develop new markets (created new business worth US$1M/year in France)

to something that emphasizes the result, and then adds detail about the work that was done:

- Created new business worth US$1M/year in France by establishing new business framework with Paris-based sales reps

- Increased sales in key North America market by 15% by introducing new channel segmentation that focused on shelf space in large retail chains

.. and so on.  The point here is that in a resume your responsibilities don't do a lot of talking - it's what you could actually accomplish that shows the true impact you had on your organization. (note: you can also add the "responsibility line" directly underneath the title, as I demonstrated here)

If your resume looks like example one at the top of this post, start working in your accomplishments, so that the reader of your resume can better evaluate how well you've done the work expected of you. 

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com

Mixing Responsibilities and Accomplishments in the Resume

This post is cross-posted in my MBA/LLM/grad school admissions blog, that is focused on providing advice for people applying to schools.

I am often asked how to combine accomplishments with responsibilities in a well-organized and easy-to-read resume.

Accomplishments are the attention-grabbing and impactful things you have done. Describing your responsibilities, on the other hand, helps to make the nature and scope of your job clear. 

Describing Responsibility:

Let's use a management consulting position as an example. In this case, the job description is obvious, something like "provide management consulting to clients".  This information is not necessary on your resume.  But detailing the nature of clients, for instance, could be more useful, and add a new layer of detail: "responsible for planning strategy for automotive supply companies; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases".  In this case, the explanation of the responsibility that comes with this particular job serves to add detail and focus. So, thus far we have this information ready for the resume:

Management Consultant
Responsible for planning strategy for domestic heavy equipment and automotive manufacturers; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases

Describing an Accomplishment:

This is the core of your resume.  In any job, you want to show the key accomplishments you have had that impacted your customers and organization.  This is the best way for you to represent what you have done, and provides the most effective basis for the reader of your resume to assess your career. Using the same management consulting example, our consultant may have helped a client purchase an overseas parts supplier:  "Led multinational team of 4 completing due diligence on target as key part of US$35M purchase of French automotive parts supplier". This would give us this:

Management Consultant

Responsible for planning strategy for domestic heavy equipment and automotive manufacturers; specialize in cross-border acquisition cases

• Led multinational team of 4 completing due diligence on target as key part of US$35M purchase of French automotive parts supplier

The completed example leads with a title, and then offers a description (i.e. job responsibility) and then has accomplishments as bullet points.  This is one effective way to include both types of information on the resume.

Questions:

1) Doesn't listing both responsibilities and accomplishments create too much overlap between the two?

Answer: It is natural for there to be some overlap, as your responsibilities should be connected to your accomplishments in some way. If you feel that the responsibility line is totally and completely redundant, obviously you can remove it, and just focus on the accomplishments.

2) Won't this method take up a lot of space on the resume?

Answer: It is most effective to list responsibility for recent positions, positions where the responsibility is important detail, or for positions in which the nature of the work may be unclear.  I'd recommend not listing detailed responsibility for older positions, especially starting positions.  If you were a "Junior Marketing Analyst" 5 or 6 years ago, for instance, I think the responsibility description would be less necessary, although the accomplishments would still be important.

John Couke

john.couke@gmail.com