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Lifetime Career Management-sm |
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Showcase Your "Home Run" Accomplishments, Part 2, by William S. Frank
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This is Part Two of a two-part article. [Return to
| What I Did and How I Did It | The Result (So What?) |
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Good Examples
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Not all accomplishment statements follow these rules. Some
wordings are good just because they
sound good. If they sound impressive, leave them alone. "Operated within one and one-half percent
of projected annual budget," is an accomplishment simply stated. It should be left alone.
Concentrate on improving weaker text.
Sometimes two, three or even twelve small achievements can be lumped together to make them sound better. For example: If you taught the same apherisis seminar every month for five years, that's fairly routine. But if you've taught the seminar 60 times with consistently excellent evaluations, that's exciting.
Sometimes companies abandon projects or shelve reports you've worked hard on. You still
accomplished something even though they didn't use your work. Let's suppose you spent six
months writing a report, and they shelved it. There's no "So what?" Nothing great happened. Your
effort can still be written as an accomplishment, like this:
"Designed research study, interviewed 438 people, collected data from 27 academic sources and
presented 187 page strategic report to shareholders."
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Bad Examples
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How to Rework Your Writing
You'll probably need to rework your sentences many times to give them impact. When you first
write your achievements, they may be too general. You may need to return to them and sharpen
them up. Here are some examples of accomplishments that have been rewritten and improved:
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A CEO Struggles With His Accomplishments
Most of us, perhaps even all of us, struggle with feelings of inadequacy, even though we've accomplished a
lot. During a recent consulting meeting I was surprised to see these words written by a physician executive who had been president of several large healthcare companies:
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"I have a large number of significant accomplishments, and people for whom I have a great deal of
respect, note and comment favorably on these accomplishments, and also express confidence that I
can continue this record in other areas. "Yet I was usually surprised when I achieved them (even though frequently I did it with ease). The circumstances were usually that these problems/opportunities simply became available to me in the course of my life or job, and it just seemed up to me to handle them. Very importantly, I did not aggressively seek them out (though I often did make myself noticeably available) and so made no promises about how well I might solve them. "In the search for a new career, I feel that if I could bring myself to make these accomplishments more a part of my self-image, I would fare much better. The tangible evidence is there, but I seem to want the potential employer to interpret it and him place me in the new job, without my having to explicitly promise miracles. "This is what has always happened in the past—and I have always had strong achievement in every new job. But I am still reluctant. I feel this behavior by me is not logical, and can result in my being underemployed (because I'm being rather passive in the selection of the new job). Just realizing that it's not logical doesn't seem to help that much. I really need some help on this one." |
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Apparently, Mark got the insight he needed. Shortly after writing this,
he became President of a high-tech startup company. Today, 15 years later,
he is co-Principal in a successful investment management firm for high-net worth
individuals, many of them physicians. Most people feel insecure from time to time, and naturally, a
career transition heightens that.
Concentrate on your successes, and keep reciting them in your mind. Just remember,
the future holds great promise for you.
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| Summary | ||||
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| This is one of the most worthwhile career exercises you will ever do. Take your time here. Don't rush. Don't gloss over it. You can easily afford to spend several hours—perhaps several days—documenting
your past performance.
There's a $50,000 resume, a $150,000 resume, and a $250,000 resume—and the difference between them is often simply the character and strength of the accomplishments. Your resume should read $10,000-$50,000 above your last salary level, and it will if you agonize over your past achievements.
If your resume is full of hard-hitting accomplishments,
you'll shorten your job search considerably.
Doors will open more easily. You'll be interviewed more often. Your interviews will
go much better, and you'll be hired sooner. Good luck, and happy writing.
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| How to Start | ||||
| 1. | Take a separate sheet of paper for each job title you've had. If you've had six different jobs inside one company, you'll still need six pieces of paper. Volunteer experience counts as a job. So does school. So does being a homemaker. | |||
| 2. | Quickly write your accomplishments for each job "off the top of your head." Don't worry about grammar or form. Just get them down. Brainstorm. | |||
| 3. | Then clean them up. Go back and add details. Refer to your patient charts or past performance reviews for facts and numbers. Tighten them up. Edit and shorten them. | |||
| 4. | Read Gary Provost's article, Pack Every Word With POWER. It's the best short article on writing I've ever seen. This is important. Don't skip this step! Then rewrite. | |||
| 5. | Let others read your accomplishments and give you ideas. Incorporate their ideas into your work. | |||
| 6. | Sort your accomplishments into functional categories (or core competencies) such as clinical, technical, teaching, or practice management. Executives often use categories like marketing, general management, budgeting and finance, cost containment, public relations and so on. | |||
| 7. | Prioritize your accomplishments putting the most-important first, the second most-important second, and so on, and the least important last.
BACK to Part One of this article. Return to index of articles. |
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