Dear Coach Wolfgang,
You have mentioned that my resume should focus on my results and not on the tasks I was responsible for. How do I come up with my results?

Jared K.,
Austin, Texas

Thank you for the question! I’m glad to hear you are strengthening your resume by focusing on results.

So What?

The first step that I mention to clients is to ask the ”so what?” question. After each bullet point, ask yourself, ”so what?”

Resume Example

Your bullet point reads, “Created strategic marketing campaign.” Now ask yourself, “so what?”, meaning, what were the results of this campaign? Why would I, as a hiring manager, care about reading this information? Your answer may be, ”Well this campaign landed a click through rate of 67% which was the best of all the email campaigns we ran in 2009.” Great! Put that information on your resume! Now the employers will know that you can create a strategic marketing campaign and, more importantly, that you can create a SUCCESSFUL strategic marketing campaign.

The action I want you to take is to ask the ”so what?” question after each bullet point on your resume. Will you have results after each bullet? Probably not. However, you should have results for most of them. For the ones without results, ask yourself, “is this a value-added bullet point?” In some cases you will say ”yes” and in others you will say ”no”.  Remove the “no’s”.

SAR Approach

Many of you may have heard of the SAR (or STAR) approach to answering interview questions. SAR: Situation, Action, Result

It is a method used to answer behavioral interview questions, however, you can also use this approach when trying to think of results for your resume. Think through work situations you have encountered. What action did you take in accordance with that situation? What were the results of your action?

Resume Example

Say you were faced with a situation where your client has no brand name recognition in the marketplace. You take the action of creating a survey for consumers to rank the different ways to increase your client’s brand recognition. Your next action was gathering the data and proposing the top three ways to increase your client’s brand recognition. The client implemented one of the ideas which resulted in a higher percentage of brand recognition within their consumer base.

Using the ”so what?” question or the SAR approach gives you multiple ways to remember the results of your work. Now you are well on your way to a results oriented resume!

Contact us today to learn more to an Austin resume writing services.