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Accomplishments Will Get Your Resume — and You — Noticed
By Alan Kerschen, ConstructionJobs.com
After reviewing countless resumes during my career as an executive with several environmental firms and executive search firms, I am still continually amazed at how most job seekers fail to create a resume that will actually help them get a job.
If you really want a job in this economy, if you really want to make your resume stand out, you have to focus your resume on what matters — and that’s accomplishments, not a road map of where you’ve been.
Why is this so important? That’s simple. Potential employers reviewing resumes typically spend 10 to 15 seconds looking at a resume. That’s all the time and attention you have to stand out from the literally thousands of job seekers competing for the same job.
The best way to get their attention is to put an “Accomplishments” section at the top of your resume and emphasize things that you have done that have:
- Saved the company money
- Made the company money
- Solved problems for the company
Those are the values that company owners and executives value in today’s business environment. Those are the types of accomplishments that will get you noticed — and move your resume to the top of the stack.
There are hundreds and hundreds of candidates who have more than five years of residential or commercial experience building a subdevelopment or schools or strip centers. But only a few have listed at the top of their resume such accomplishments as:
- “I saved the company $500,000 in costs by effectively managing subcontractors.”
- “I made the company more than $300,000 by completing the project 40 days early.”
- “I found a solution to a foundation problem that saved the company two weeks of construction time.”
Facts like these are more important than the road map of your career.
If your resume doesn’t highlight your accomplishments, redo it. Spend some time focusing on what is really important in your job search — so you can create a grab-them-by-the-throat-in-five-seconds resume.
How to Structure Your Resume
Your resume should be a one-to-two page synopsis of your expertise.
- “Key Accomplishments” needs to be in the top third of page one.
Your accomplishment should be listed in three to six bullet points; with each point one or two lines long. Remember, your bullet points should be hard-hitting facts of how you saved the company money, made them money or how you solved a problem.
Be prepared to discuss these points in detail when you get a call from an employer because they will want to know more.
- “Project Examples” should be listed next.
This is a list of several projects that you were involved with, their size, when you worked on them and what you did.
- “Relevant Experience”
List your experience in chronological order, with the most recent experience at the top. Here you can include a brief description of what you did at each job. If you have an extensive work history, you may need to shorten the info for each job to keep your resume within two pages.
- “Education”
This is where you will want to list your degrees, certifications, licenses, etc. You may or may not want to date items in this section.
- Don’t list references in this resume.
Remember what you want to accomplish with this resume is a phone call so you can expound upon your attributes and why they should hire you. Once they call you and talk to you, you can ask them if they want a more detailed version of your resume and references.
Your resume is only the first step in your job search process, but if you don’t produce a great resume, you may never get to step two.
Alan Kerschen is a sales manager at ConstructionJobs.com, which powers the NAHB Career Center. For more information, e-mail Kerschen, or call him at 828-251-1344 x205.
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