Writing Resume Achievements

Value is one of the many words that come to mind when writing resume achievements that stand out in a sea of candidates. As you write your resume, you will need clarity regarding your career direction and personal brand, clarity of the value added throughout your leadership career, clarity regarding your market etc.  However, how do you concisely articulate 20+ years of your story to convey the most relevant, compelling, and attention-getting highlights? After all, being highly regarded at your company is often associated with leading capital projects, spearheading turnarounds and restructurings, rebuilding underperforming teams, or heading up mergers and acquisitions. 

Creating a master version of your professional resume as a central repository for storing, tracking, and referencing your career milestones and defining moments can go a long way in helping you with how to write a good executive resume for your next career move.

The master resume is a great starting point and refresher for beginning the process of reflecting upon your career to size up what you have accomplished. Upon reviewing the master resume, you can identify the top three most noteworthy career achievements for maybe the last 10 years, at a minimum. Then apply this same exercise to each leadership role you have held during your career.

Focus and frame the story of your leadership career told through your professional resume by utilizing the C.A.R. method, which stands for Challenge, Action, and Result. Describe the challenge by giving some thought to the state of the environment at the time you were recruited for a particular senior leadership assignment. Ask yourself what was it about you that encouraged management to select you above your peers to lead a strategic initiative?  Determine what action you took to solve the problem and then convey the outcome.

The C.A.R. technique will save you time in analyzing the scope, contribution, and business impact of your leadership contributions. This method can be applied when writing a killer CEO resume, IT Director resume, or Supply Chain Manager resume. It works across the board.

Bear in mind that you will need to balance your accomplishments against your soft skills that provide insight into how you arrive at decisions and collaborate with others to successfully implement organizational changes.

Times have changed. Much of how we live, work, and play is online today.  So be sure to leverage LinkedIn as an additional tool for communicating information to prospective employers that did not make the cut for inclusion in your executive resume.

For help with how to write a good LinkedIn profile, executive resume, or cover letter for an executive position contact us today online resume services at resumesbyjoyce.com or 404-790-4883.