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Tips for Including Achievement Statements and Skills in your Resume

Do you, like me, struggle to write achievement statements in your resume?  You run multiple projects at a time and a new one starts before the last one is finished.  You know whether you delivered on schedule and under budget, but you’re not sure anybody is tracking ROI/value realization and whether the business was able to use the product to deliver the millions of dollars that sales promised.

I don’t have a quick fix for this, but there are a few approaches you can use to create achievement statements even when you don’t know how much the cost savings were or how much revenue was generated.  (If you do know this, or can get this information, use it!)  For starters, here are some questions to ask yourself when brainstorming your achievements:

• Did I make or save the company money?
• Did I reach my goals quickly or often?
• Did I contribute toward achieving company goals?
• Did I create a system or process that helped the company’s productivity?
• Did I help the company reduce costs and waste?
• Did I help improve customer satisfaction and retention?
• Did I receive awards for my performance?
• Did I lead a team and drive them to achieve our KPIs?

Jobscan suggests using the CAR formula for writing achievements.  Using this approach, you write out the Challenge, the Action you took, and the Result of your actions.  Then, you combine these sections into a concise statement.

Novoresume proffers a similar approach in their career blog - Timeframe, Scale, Results.  What was the Timeframe for or frequency of the task?  What was the Scale - number of people or size of the budget, for example.  What were the Results that came as a result of your actions?

Here are a few more achievement statement tips:

• Use at least five achievement statements in your resume.
• Spread them out across the Summary and Experience sections.
• If you have impressive, relevant achievements outside of work, list them in a dedicated Achievements section.  The key word is "relevant"; you probably shouldn’t include things like Eagle Scout, church service, or being on the High School honor roll when applying for a project manager position.
• Use keywords from the job description in your achievement statements.
• Your PMP is a significant achievement.  Mention it in the Summary section, even if you have a separate Certifications section that includes more details about your certifications.

I probably should have talked about Why before How, but here we are.  TopResume put together a Top 10 list of common resume mistakes.  Coming in at number five was that 33% of employers surveyed indicated that failure to demonstrate and quantify results (as in, not including achievement statements) “can cost a candidate the job.”

References:

• www.jobscan.co/blog/resume-accomplishments-examples
• www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/listing-accomplishments-on-your-resume
• https://novoresume.com/career-blog/how-to-write-your-achievements-in-your-resume
• www.topresume.com/career-advice/officehours-worst-resume-deal-breaker-mistakes

Did you think I was done?  I did, but I decided to take a moment to talk about project management skills.  I could milk this out into a separate article, but it’s really just a few tips and a list of possible soft skills, hard skills, and technical skills (if needed) you might need as a project manager.  Let’s start with a few tips:

• Even though there’s a long list of skills to come, these are just for reference.  On your resume, you should emphasize skills the hiring company has included in the job description and minimize listing other skills, especially if you have limited space to work with on your resume.
• You can have a two-column list of skills - one column for hard skills and one for soft skills - but don’t list more than five of each.  This is a space-saving approach.  If there are other skills you want to highlight, write them out as achievements and include them in the Experience section of your resume.
• If you don’t have a lot of project management experience, or you have work history gaps, you can include a Relevant Skills section in your resume to help fill the page and show you understand what the hiring company is looking for.

Here are some project management and PM-adjacent skills that a hiring manager might be looking for.  I'll close with this list (Disclaimer:  some of this is from my personal experience, some from the above references, and some from scattered sources that I don't have documented).

• A sense of humor
• Adaptability
• Attention to Detail
• Budget Management
• Change Management
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Conflict Management
• Cost Management
• Critical Thinking
• Decision-Making
• Delegation
• Gantt Charts
• Hosting a Kick-Off Meeting
• Interpersonal Skills
• Kanban Boards
• Leadership Skills
• Mapping the Project Timeline
• Motivation
• Negotiation
• Organization
• Patience
• Policy Knowledge
• Problem Solving
• Project Budgeting
• Project Forecasting
• Project Management "Methodologies" (waterfall, agile, lean, six sigma, etc.)
• Project Management Software
• Project Planning
• Project Portfolio Management
• Project Reporting
• Project Roadmapping
• Project Scheduling
• Project Scoping
• Reporting Skills
• Risk Management
• Task Management
• Teamwork
• Technical Skills
• Technical Writing
• Time Management
• Workload Management
• Writing a Project Brief or Charter