How to quantify accomplishments on resume

If you’re looking for a job, it’s important that you know how to quantify accomplishments on resume. You must do this or otherwise your resume will lack business impact.

If you struggle with knowing how to quantify accomplishments on resume then look at these specific examples:

March 2, 2024 by Kazu Fujimoto

• Budget worked with
• Revenue generated
• Improved a product or process by a %
• Cost savings on projects
• Cost of tools, fixtures, parts you’re working with
• Improving material properties
• Spreadsheet dollar values
• Dollar values of goods moved, shipment, logistics
• Number of items, staff, spreadsheets, patients worked with

Tie the above in with your experience and see where you can quantify them. The above examples will work for industries in healthcare, finance, engineering, etc. Make sure you start looking at the dollar value impact that your work has.

Are you writing procedures that detail a $100K+ manufacturing process? Then write it!

Companies love it when you save them or make them money. It’s important that you showcase that you can do so.

What recruiters and hiring managers look for on resumes

Recruiters and hiring managers look for keywords, quantitative results, accomplishments, and skills pertaining to the job. When writing your resume you need to make sure you keep those 4 items in mind.

Keywords

These will be specific skills, industries, and things that recruiters and hiring managers will be looking for on your resume.

Make sure you read the job description and include the necessary keywords on your resume.

Every set of industry and job title with come with a different set of keywords so make sure you understand those.

Quantitative Results

As stated above, quantitative results are what will showcase your business impact to the recruiter and hiring manager.

This is the “why” and the “what” of what you’re accomplishing.

Are you making money, improving efficiency, saving time and cost for the company?

Stating quantitative results will show that you have the capabilities to make the company money. This is also the reason why the company is looking to hire you in the first place – you’re supposed to be able to turn them a profit.

Don’t confuse this with the ability of making sales – you’re just using the quantitative results section of your resume to showcase the dollar impact of your work.

See more on: How to Write Resume Bullet Points

Accomplishments

A huge mistake that job seekers make when writing resumes is that they don’t focus on accomplishments. Instead they focus on a job description standpoint. Big mistake here.

Specifying your accomplishments instead of making the bulletpoints on your resume look like a job description is what’ll put you in the Top 1% of job applicants.

Anyone can copy paste a job description on their resumes, but accomplishments will be unique to the individual.

Not everyone in the workplace has the skills needed to get things done. Not everyone in the corporate world even accomplishes much!

Skills

These will be the specific hard skills that you use for your job. Software, calculation methods, spreadsheets, and anything technical that you’re capable of need to go into the skills section of your resume.

This will go in the bottom of your resume to show give a quick summary of the skills you have pertaining to the job.

Certain examples of skills to put in your resume would be CAD, FEA, Design, Tolerance Stack Up, Discounted Cash Flow, Numerical Analysis, etc.

Note that the above are all specific hard skills that are to be put on resumes.

You need numbers on your resume

Look at it from a simple standpoint, you need numbers on your resume. All executives in companies really care about is numbers. If you’re the owner of a company, you’re going to want someone that can produce business results.

Notice that whenever you’re in an executive presence, they always care about the numbers.

Company financials are consisted of numbers. Finance departments worldwide will scramble for specific numbers for the company.

Numbers are measurable and it makes it easy for the company to determine whether they’re profitable or not.

All companies need to be profitable, bottom line.

Why most people struggle to quantify accomplishments on resume

Most people are not thinking in terms of business impact. They only think about what they do day by day, that they forget to focus on the big picture overall.

The reality is that everything that everyone does has some sort of a dollar value impact for companies.

You can be working on an Excel Spreadsheet worth millions of dollars. That truck that you’re determining shipping and logistics for – it could be for a million dollar shipment. You can also be tracking inventory in a warehouse or stockroom worth of millions of dollars.

It’s all in how you frame your accomplishments. Make sure to frame your accomplishments from a business standpoint.

Keep a daily log of your tasks

Why are you not keeping a daily log of your tasks?

There is absolutely no reason not to and it only takes about 5 minutes of your work day.

This will load you up with ammo that you can use for your resume and even negotiations with your manager for a raise.

Whenever you complete some task, make note of it, and try to understand the specific dollar value impact of what it is you’re doing.

Closing thoughts on quantifying accomplishments

They don’t teach how to quantify accomplishments on resume at all. The career advice seminars at schools and universities will tell you more things that are “soft skills” focused. Don’t listen to all the career coaches that don’t have this type of framework within their resume writing.

Stop listening to the self proclaimed career coaches, HR specialists, recruiters, and hiring managers that lack a technical framework.

You must quantify accomplishments on your resume in order to succeed with your job search. This is a non-negotiable item.

90% of my clients struggle with quantifying their accomplishments on their resumes, which is why they come out to me to seek resume writing services.

If you’re interested in our resume writing services using a very technical and effective framework, check out our resume writing services.