Resume - Quantity v. Quality
I am starting to get serious about my job search and am struggling with writing my resume to accurately represent what I offer. My current role is in social work with local government, I've also worked as a legal assistant and had contract jobs as an HR coordinator/HR assistant. The feedback I've gotten on my resume is that I need to show accomplishments and have more quantitative information. Like - how many applications do you process daily. Which boggles my mind - the roles I've had are heavily influenced by the assorted personalities of clients and measured in the quality of service provided. There's no real way to demonstrate my work numerically or quantitatively. One of my managers has said that I "add quiet value". How do I document what I do and my value to a workplace on my resume?
It's true - anchoring your accomplishments with quantitative information will grab the attention of hiring managers and keep their eyes on your resume - Important considering recruiters devote an average of only 6 seconds/resume!
Consider your accomplishments. Can you make them more tangible by describing them via:
* Frequency
* Numbers
* Ranges
* Dollar amounts
* Time
* Scale
* Sales
* Rank
* Percentages
You've got this!
The key questions to ask yourself is what have you accomplished and how did you make a difference? For the type of roles you’ve held recommend also including software and tools you have used. Last add keywords which can be found in a search and you can also customize by position you apply for.
Maybe don’t think about it in the sense of translating something into numbers but instead, ask yourself how that task or experience provided value to your clients or company. You’re right, some things cannot be translated into direct numbers but you can definitely explain how something made a difference.
Ask yourself what type of work are you looking for? Social work or HR?
It also deals a lot with what position you’re seeking and how you plan to get there. If you have a friend who can vouch for your resume and the role is similar, you won’t need as many hard numbers as if you don’t know anyone at the place you are applying and you need to beat the ATS system to get your foot in. The great part is that you can have your LinkedIn profile be the more verbal version of your resume- showing the qualitative impacts you’ve made. But for your resume, try taking things you do and turn them into data. How many cases did you handle? Is that more than average? Turn it into a percent. What about improvements in clients? Saving the company money? There are so many tasks that we do that can be turned into numbers, you just have to flip the view to see it.