In today’s job market which is constantly evolving whether you are looking for a C-suite role , senior management or middle manager role, what matters is a value oriented 30 seconds read for prospective employer or hiring manager. Whether you have hired a professional resume writer or doing it DIY, communicating the value you have created or benefits you have generated at lightning speed is the key to land up with a face to face conversation with the hiring manager.
For many C-suite, executive, senior management & to be board professionals translating years of experience, expertise & achievements into a skim 30 seconds read can be extremely frustrating & overwhelming.
As a result, their portfolio career documents- resume & linkedIn profile is so dense with lot of information about responsibilities & tasks with handful of achievements/benefits generated.
This approach puts a lot of work on the hiring managers to go through each minute detail when they have to screen upwards of 500 plus profiles in a span of a couple of hours. As such, descriptive frames of a resume cannot convey why the professional is best suited for the role.
In today’s scenario, hiring managers prefer to look at the big picture. They enjoy reading a resume which can help them click checkboxes to evaluate a potential fit. If there are a larger number of right ticks, there is a higher probability that you will have a chance of being called for the first level of interaction.
Translating your deliverables into achievements akin to showcasing a big picture
Transforming your career blueprint as detailed out in your resume & linkedIn into the big picture means focussing on your achievements- how you have helped your organization. Careercle uses proprietary OAR- Objective Action Result Model to articulate your big picture. If you are in sales, or work with a company that tracks your statistics on a regular basis, this job is a walk in the park. You have an achievement oriented resume that showcases hiring manager why you best suited for the role.
If you are currently leading a team spanning marketing, HR, operations & supply chain, you need to dig deeper as a lot of achievements your team has made under your guidance may be hidden.
Quantifying the big picture
If your role or deliverables are not directly tied to the company’s revenue, it does not mean you do not have measurable/quantifiable results. The following points can help you deep dive into how you can measure your success/value you have delivered
- Your proud movements: What are you proud of? Which achievements do you cherish the most? Your resume writer/resume expert would lead your resume with these kind of achievements. Some of the questions your resume should answer include
- Did you stop your organization from losing money?
- Did you improve operating efficiency- you got the same amount of work done with fewer people or improved some parameters such as sales growth, operating leverage, financial leverage, cost of marketing, service levels by xx% with the same number of people?
- Did you build a system which can work in auto pilot mode?
- Did you create a separate revenue stream?
- Did your market research initiatives help build a new feature in an existing product that increased revenue by y%?
- Did you help reduce the number of qualifications in the annual audit exercise?
All these achievements are noteworthy & would glue the reader to your resume & give a deeper insight into how you can benefit the prospective employer by solving a problem in hand.
- Did I save money?: Saving money or adding to operating margin is as important for the bottom line as generating money through increased revenue or generating additional revenue streams.
- Did you negotiate discounts?
- Did you file all the compliances before the due date which saved penalties?
- Did you identify financial discrepancies which saved potential legal cost?
- Did you restructure the entire process with less money spent ?
All these achievements when converted into dollar amount/percentages can give a clear picture of financial benefits you generated even if you never worked in a direct revenue generating operating business unit.
- Did I reduce the time float? : Operating time savings translates into huge value add benefits for organizations focussed on operating efficiency.
- Did you introduce a new model or automation process that saved x % time & helped improve operating margin by y %.
- Did you restructure a process that reduced the time spent by z%
Quantifying these savings in dollar amount/percentage depicts value you have created by just altering/automating processes
- Retention Levels? : When the market & organizations are experiencing increased attrition levels, hiring managers would be interested to know how you transformed the work culture & practices into improved employee retention levels & boosting their morale. Your focus should be on quantifying how many employees stayed after you altered work culture vis-a-vis the previous period. This not only applies to employees but to customer retention levels as well. If you can measure & quantify customer retention & satisfaction levels, you’ve got an achievement that you can mention on your resume.
These are typical questions we ask our clients during my 60 minutes call & questionnaire. If you can answer these questions, your resume can be the best marketing collateral to sell your candidature for the next big challenge.
Our clients are surprised & astonished to find out what answers to questions uncover. You will be too!
Are you looking for an executive resume writer, someone to build a compelling story for your next move to rebrand your resume or linkedIn, Careercle would be happy to chat & help you in your next step of career growth. You can reach out to us here.
