Your CV is more than just a rundown of your job responsibilities, it’s a powerful tool to highlight the real impact you’ve made in your career. In a competitive job market, employers want to see more on your CV than a bulleted list of responsibilities from your previous positions.
Quantifying your performance on a CV is an effective way to demonstrate your value and highlight your accomplishments in prior positions.
Recruiters expect to see numbers that correspond with your actions to determine the value you could add as a prospective employee. These numbers are used in a process called quantifying achievements, which provides a measure of your success.
A CV with quantified accomplishments leaves a strong impression on the hiring professional. By quantifying your accomplishments, you provide recruiters with a concrete and vivid picture of what you’re capable of achieving. Numbers speak volumes, they add credibility to your claims and make your achievements stand out.
What are Quantifiable Achievements?
Quantifiable achievements on a CV refer to specific accomplishments from one’s professional or sometimes educational history that are expressed in numerical terms. These achievements serve to provide concrete evidence of an individual’s capabilities, making a CV more compelling and persuasive to potential employers.
Quantifiable achievements are a way to benchmark one’s professional contributions against universally understood metrics, enabling both the job seeker and potential employer to gauge the tangible impact of past roles and responsibilities. By using specific numbers, percentages, or other quantifiable metrics, job seekers can offer a clearer picture of their past contributions and the potential value they could bring to a new role.
How do you write quantifiable achievements on a CV?
Writing quantifiable achievements on a CV is about translating your work outcomes into measurable and specific terms to showcase your real impact. Here is how you can quantify your achievements:
- Keep track of your work
The first thing you need to do should become a habit for you, if you want to save up some valuable time. No matter what industry you work in, you should be tracking your work so you can add those metrics to your CV. The more data you have on your performance at prior jobs, the better situated you will be to identify the metrics that present you in as favorable a light as possible. If you constantly keep track of your work, and your achievements, it will not only be easier for you to add the quantified data to your CV once you start searching for a new job, but you will also see what you are good at, and what you need to work on. Key things to track include, daily tasks, time spent on tasks, people you work with, results, customer or manager feedback, project deadlines, quality metrics, and speed improvements. So make sure you make a list, and keep it updated with every work-related accomplishment you get, along with the quantified result.
- Gather your data
If you haven’t kept records of your performance data before starting work on your CV for a job search or promotion application, that doesn’t mean you can’t still use quantities to improve your CV. If you find that you have a lack of usable data and need to gather all of your data during the job search, you may need to prioritize which metrics you devote time to compiling data on. Think about both the areas that will be most applicable to the position you are applying for and the metrics where you performed the best and start by compiling the information you need to quantify them, then proceed to other areas as time permits. Quantifying achievements requires baseline data to show the impact you made over time. Gather baseline data such as, team performance metrics, department statistics, customer feedback scores, project success rates, website traffic, or sales figures.
- Make use of ranges
Numbers on your CV can be your greatest friends when it comes to job searching. However, that does not mean that you should absolutely stay away from ranges. There are several reasons why you might not include a specific number in an accomplishment on your resume, like, you don’t have access to a specific number, you can’t calculate an exact number to quantify the achievement, or you prefer to use a range, rather than a specific number. Whatever the reason, using a range to quantify an achievement can be just as strong as an exact number. While specificity is valuable on a CV, sometimes you won’t always have access to precise numbers. Whether the lack of precision is because you do not have the data you need to give an exact number or because there was variance in the underlying data, a range is an effective way to communicate the data without being overly specific. For example, a personal trainer may describe their work at a prior gym by saying they served 15 to 20 clients every week in order to give an impression of their client load while acknowledging it could vary from week to week.
- Focus on the key metrics
Numbers on your CV are effective, but that only applies if you use them correctly. You should not just throw them around anywhere you can, but instead, you need to focus on key metrics. Such metrics that can catch the recruiter’s attention are, money, when it comes to money, numbers are essential for every successful company. If you can show improved financial performance due to your achievements, you should absolutely include some strong numbers there, either as a specific amount, or a percentage. You can also quantify people, which can mean many things from clients you had, to the size of a team you had managed. There’s also time. Experience is highly valued in the professional world, so you should always use specific numbers when possible to demonstrate the length of your professional experience.
- Proofread
Last but not least, you need to check if all the numbers you have listed on your CV are actually correct. You need to present accurate and real information to the recruiter and remain honest throughout the whole hiring process.
Numbers speak volumes. They’re the language of progress and results. By quantifying your achievements on your CV, you validate your contributions and establish yourself as an outcome-oriented professional. Remember, in the end, it’s not just about what you’ve done, it’s about the measurable impact you’ve made. So, harness the power of metrics and let your achievements shine.