13 Ways on How to Quantify Your Accomplishments On a Resume

Lots of my clients struggle with this, so today, we’re going over 13 ways on how to quantify your accomplishments on a resume.

February 29, 2024 by Kazu Fujimoto

3 of the biggest mistakes my clients make are:

• Not quantifying results and accomplishments
• Only saying what they did at their jobs
• Putting too much or too little

We’re going over the first one – how to quantify your accomplishments on a resume.

Use the below frameworks to learn how to quantify your accomplishments on a resume.

1. Use dollar values

At the end of the day, all companies care about is making money, how profitable they are, and if the company shareholders are going to get their cut.

As a result, requirements downstream from management will look at metrics such as revenue, budget, etc.

This is why you need to specify the dollar value impact on your resume.

Specifying the dollar value impact on your resume will tell management the impact you’re capable of providing.

If the impact aligns with what your managers goals are, then congratulations, you’re going to get the interview.

In the corporate world, managers and above set goals, and these goals are quantified. If its not quantified, it can’t be measured, and therefore not a valid goal.

Dollars are a great way to quantify the business impact of your accomplishments.

2. Improvements in efficiency

Are you just someone that clocks in and clocks out or do you change how things are done?

Companies don’t want someone that just clocks in and clocks out – they want their employees to take charge and deliver results.

If you see companies do something a certain way, but it can be done better?

You should suggest implementing that change.

Improving efficiency is a very valuable metric to add on your resume, which hiring managers love to see.

Companies will set goals or mission objectives in place such as “Improving operating efficiency”.

As a result, specifying improvements in efficiency will increase your chances of being selected for an interview.

3. Reductions in cost

Often times, you’ll hear about companies taking cost cutting measures, especially when things are going bad.

You’ll want to demonstrate some of the changes that you’ve made in your work which has saved the company on costs.

Hiring managers and leadership will love to know about measures you’ve taken to reduce cost.

Along with specifying cost cutting measures in your resume, it’s something you can talk about in your job interviews as well.

4. Time savings

This goes hand in hand with cost savings.

Did you implement some changes in a procedure that saved 2 hours?

Did you design some fixturing that saved set up time by half a day?

In the big excel sheet you were working on, did you set up some type of formula or macro that saved yourself and others time?

Boom – make sure to include those types of time saving accomplishments in your resume.

Saving time is effectively saving money.

Companies are always looking for ways to run more “lean”.

5. Dealing with budget

This goes hand in hand with using dollar values on your resume.

When you’re responsible for a certain budget and making decision with that budget, you’re proving yourself to be a decision maker with business impact results.

As you move on in the corporate world, you’re going to be responsible for making decisions which are going to have financial impacts.

You’ll need to make sure you are able to demonstrate working with budgets to show business impact.

A few examples of where you can use this:

• Lead on a project
• Treasurer of a club
• Manager of a department

There are many situations you can frame in regards to dealing with budget, you just have to be able to identify them.

6. Identifying downstream impacts

So this is a general item.

No matter what you’re doing in a company, whatever you’re working on will have downstream impacts.

Identify where those downstream impacts are.

A simple example would be for a warehouse worker:

Say you’re a warehouse worker responsible for organizing pallets for shipments.

Boring stuff, right?

Not if you frame it correctly.

Instead of “organizing pallets for shipments”, it can be something such as “Responsible for the set up and arrangement of key logistics areas that generate $5000 in daily revenue”.

The key to learning how to quantify your accomplishments on your resume is looking at the dollar value impact.

It’s really easy to identify when you take a look at how your work impacts downstream results.

7. How many of something did you work with

If you’re still stuck on figuring out ways to quantify your accomplishments on a resume, ask yourself, how many of something?

This can be spreadsheets, documents, trays, menus, literally anything.

Adding these quantities will associate the specific task you’re doing with a measurable value – which is key for identifying on your resume.

8. Number of units

Units can respond to shipments, pieces, assemblies, meals, etc.

If you’re dealing with something you can count, put that on your resume!

9. How many people you dealt with

This works for businessmen, receptionists, managers in any industry.

Anything customer interfacing will resolve in a situation that you can use to quantify what you did.

Examples:

• Guests in a hotel lobby
• Meetings that you led in front of X people
• Customers greeted
• Patients treated
• Calls placed

This will work for corporate, retail, hospitality, healthcare, etc.

Ask yourself how many people you dealt with for certain scenarios and put those on your resume.

10.How many times did you do something?

If you’re responsible for a task that was repeatable and reproducible, ask how many times you did something?

Along with how many times you did something, other metrics can come out of it such as successes made or disruptions avoided.

For example, in a production environment, did you implement changes that reduced the amount of disruptions X amount of times?

11. How many steps?

How many steps in a certain procedure would you be working on?

Then as we look at this from a downstream impact, did you reduce or increase the number of steps in something to drive results?

(Companies and hiring managers will love to see that you reduced steps in complex procedures!)

12. Line items

You were working on an excel sheet or you were working on a 25,000+ line item excel sheet.

Or you were working with 3000+ line item BOMs (Bill of Materials).

Adding numbers regarding line items adds weight regarding the specific system that you’re working on.

13. How many parts in the system?

Say you’re a mechanic and you’re working on fixing up a vehicle – how many parts were in said vehicle?

An example bullet would be:

“Performed routine maintenance work on a 3000+ component vehicle to support shop revenue of $100K/mo.”

Closing Thoughts on How to Quantify Your Results On A Resume

Once you go through the 13 items above, you’ll realize that it’s not very difficult to quantify your accomplishments.

All it takes is some reframing and downstream analysis of what you’re doing.

Even if all you do is something simple as take orders for customers or change lightbulbs…there is still a downstream impact that you can analyze to quantify your bullet points.

Lately, we’ve been experimenting with lists of tips to make the information easily digestible for you.

Find these tips useful?

Check out our Career Services to apply them to yours!

Let’s get some numbers on your resume and get you better opportunities.