let's get rolling and we're going to take the challenges in order we're going to start with
the resume now one of the things that people were asking me a variety of different position types
they said you know I I'm really uh I'm not really sure how to how to get power into the resume and
one of the biggest tips that I gave you as far as power and value that will really help you is not
only having an accomplishments based resume where you're talking about the actual things that you
achieved but all it's not just achievement in and of itself that's important it's what you achieved
and the closer you can get your achievement in alignment to what the employers care about the
more enticed they'll be in hiring you the GL the happier they'll be that you were able to
accomplish the things that they care about the most I called these the great eight but these
are the eight areas that employers really want you to focus on or really care about in building their
businesses I'm gonna recap them here and then we're gonna talk through some ways of of getting
in into the resume uh elements of power so first one Revenue increasing Revenue next one increase
facing Market awareness brand awareness if you will customer attraction so attracting
more potential customers or attracting the actual customers themselves customer happiness
so improving customer or client satisfaction company growth so positioning your company for
a growth event maybe that's an IPO maybe that's a merger a divestiture an acquisition whatever
it might be employee happiness cost reduction and process efficiency so everything in your resume
should Center on these eight things anything else that you are articulating through your resume to
me is nothing more than housekeeping the fact that you manage the customer service team just
tells me you manage the customer service team it doesn't really tell me what you accomplished as
a result of managing the customer service team so the first thing first point that I want you
to keep in mind is focus on the great eight how did what you do affect the great eight that's the
first one second one is and this is I didn't go in into this very deeply if at all into in the mini
camp so what you might be hearing in is as far as how to think through this you probably be hearing
this from the first time but it was another way for me to help you understand how to how
to center in on on those great eights now whatever it is that you do whatever your function is your
function itself generally has a few goals so even if you look back at these eight eight areas let's
say you're on the marketing team number two well the marketing team has a goal the goal is
what to increase Market awareness ways of doing that are helping the organization be discovered
more maybe their search engine optimization improvements you can make to the website so
that when somebody goes to Google and asks it how am I going to solve this problem your company will
pop up to the top that's an improvement that increases your Market awareness but also you're
ultimately looking to how do I increase the number of leads that our sales team can actually Prospect
right that's a goal of the marketing team no matter who you are that's ultimately our goal
and there are other goals right what's another goal of the marketing team well not only do
I want to get those leads but I would like to get them at as cheaply as possible Right search
engine optimization is a very inexpensive way right because you're you're doing it basically
for free then there's advertisement how much might you be spending to get the right kind of customers
to opt-in to review your products or services or buy something from you well I want you to
think in terms of ask yourself these questions in general for me or in general for my team what are
the top three goals as it relates to my position so if you're on the marketing team carrying on
with that example right your goal is to increase Market awareness what would that look like well
if more people discover us great more followers on your Facebook page that's more people more
people hitting the page right you could look at Google analytics and notice that there more people
hitting your web page or this particular web page great that's increasing Market awareness people
are actually viewing It ultimately we want those people who are hitting the page to ultimately
either opt in to something or buy something or do something like that to engage us but basically you
everybody should be able to come up with what are my goals and another way of looking at this
is to ask yourself how am I graded right what does my employer care about and how are they grading me
on what I do how am I evaluated that's a great start that's the number one that's in general
now I want to give you smaller prompters another way now mind you we're on the resume right now now
we're just thinking about what goes on the resume and you want to talk to how you've accomplished
these goals another thing for you to look at is perhaps you're considering applying for a job
maybe you see some postings out there there's a company that you might be interviewing with maybe
number two there is the job description meaning I'm interviewing for that role or I want to
interview for that role that's the job description can you look in that job description and see are
they talking about what your responsibilities will be they likely are right if there's a if there's a
job description there they likely are telling you we need you to grow these new markets open up an
engine where secure more customers in help educate blah blah whatever it is they're probably giving
you what the goals of the position are if you on your resume can put highlights or resume bullets
that speak to how you've already accomplished those goals or overcome problems related to
those goals that's going to really bolster and add power to your resume let's say you know Andy I'm
not really sure where I want to interview I know I want to be a system engineer I know I want to be
a Content marketer I know I want to be a whatever right look at indeed comb the
different job descriptions I don't want you to apply okay you know I don't I don't want you to
be applying through those aggregators or corporate portals I'm talking about investigative work here
to ascertain what are the goals that I'm likely going to need to achieve for potential employers
that I want to work for in the kind of position I want to be in okay then what I would say number
three these quote cards should be coming in pretty good I think right any job description
meaning well get all the system engineer job descriptions out there what are they asking for
is there a Common Thread among these different uh job descriptions so in general what am I supposed
to be accomplishing based on what I do you should know that well more specifically positions I want
to Target or even if I could get my hands on some other job descriptions stimulating my ideas of
what I might might want to put in my resume to make it more powerful attractive and look
more valuable to an employer okay who's who's tracking with me so far are we good good good
all right number three now related to the great eight accomplishments I want you to think about
let's get some detail now we got the grade eight right we've got all the different ways that I
might be able to uh show value with the eight magical sounds that employers care about now I
want to try to put some teeth in there to get specific about not only how I accomplish those
goals related to these grade eight but perhaps what I contributed right specifically what
problems I solved what things I created that were stepping stones or the ultimate goal of actually
accomplishing it so here's another way to think about it when you get down to the great eight
going back with that market awareness increase in the market awareness did I do the main thing did
I do one of the eight things Andy said exactly like was I the salesperson who was making the
sale that's the main thing boom number goes up was I in charge of the marketing department that
was going after New Leads bang that's the main thing tracking who's tracking give me a hey I'm
tracking don't worry I'm gonna ask you what your favorite thing was about last week I just wanted
to get rolling hey it's nighttime man prime time I was amped up to get going in the teaching part
all right so you guys tracking with me right do I do the main thing maybe you don't do the
main thing maybe you're not the seller right maybe right maybe the revenue doesn't go up as something
you just touched maybe you did a prerequisite step what could a prerequisite step be I might be the
person who hands the sales people their packet to go pitch right that's a prerequisite step
right I might uh be involved in researching everything that the sales people need to know
how to pitch to this particular client that's a prerequisite step okay tracking tracking
okay maybe I don't do any of those either maybe I just build something and then somebody else down
the road they they take off with it maybe I'm an ingredient or I create an ingredient maybe I built
a prototype that my company is going to go and sell I built the Prototype I'm the engineer and
I just passed it off to the sales engineers and the sales people maybe I developed a white paper
that then was used as what bait value-added bait that is to right entice customers to
investigate my company further because we had knowledge about or something like that
right what's an ingredient I give you free resume template free workshops and ingredient
it is an ingredient right so so you guys tracking okay this here when you look at
your resume is going to start to give it power then what we're still on the resume
specificity in the bullets Annie I'm not sure I'm not sure how I'm going to write that bullet
or I'm not sure what you go in the bullet the bullet's going to talk about one of the great
eight but what we wanted to talk about is the effect okay what happened as a result of what I
did that question is your acid test if your resume bullet any bullet on your resume does not answer
this question take it off it adds no value as far as accomplishments go and it won't have any
teeth if if you cannot answer this question you have no fangs in those bullets there's no power
I manage the customer service team is not a bullet that's something that goes in the
housekeeping part of your resume and if you go to the anti-schooler resume writing you know what
I mean right there's a little little paragraph under the title that says customer service manager
manage 10 person customer service team to blah blah blah yan yan yan okay so when you write your
bullet taking it down one more step what happened as a result of me doing what I did if it doesn't
tell them this it ain't done okay all right and then the other issue people were having was I
can't quantify it Andy how am I going to quantify it all right I want you to think of quantifying
your bullets where you can and quantifications come in one of a couple of formats quantification
could be I increased by so much I decreased it by so much right we gained ten thousand new followers
as a result of my social media marketing campaign or whatever right that is a direct hit the best
quantification you can give I want you to think in terms of magnitude and I want you to I want you
to do something I want you to think big picture the rationale and the estimate so don't agonize
if you don't have the exact data so I think during the mini camp I talked about the CIO
and we were talking about one of the issues he was having and he created this this streamline
uh process uh that he automated that was where they were able to accelerate they were able to
get the bills uh correct and accelerate the distribution of the invoices the bills to the
customers and something that was taking two weeks he was able to get down to 20 minutes
not to mention the accuracy was improved so anything that was delayed two weeks that then went
out that was inaccurate had to get rectified and took another two weeks and it was just a hot mess
so when he didn't really understand what the financial benefit was I I just said big picture
well how much money does your company make 150 million okay that's 12 million plus give or take
let's just say 12 for simple math 12 million a month you make well if if six million of that is
delayed ever all the time you have a six million dollar cash flow problem right so you accelerated
the collections on average month over month of six million dollars right so you're thinking big
picture you just need some rationale don't worry about the level of detail or accuracy I want you
to this the quantification I'm not saying lie I'm saying the quantification serves as a frame of
reference and order of magnitude and context okay that solution however simple or complicated it was
accelerated six million dollars of the company's Billings right okay so now what
what else so we've got I got another issue um here was one direct from the direct from the
the sheet that we collected the chat you know I need help to quantify accomplishments for my
resume I'm a case manager for individuals with disabilities really no percent value to add to a
resume that's not true that's not true think about this you you said a case manager for individuals
with disabilities so I would say to that person whoever that person was who contributed that issue
how many people did you help on a monthly basis on a weekly basis on a daily basis think in terms
of generally I don't know how many each day round it out 10 20 100 right so if you're helping people
to the tune of 30 people a month or 300 people a month that's something to quantify that's 300
people who are in better shape because of you or at least their finances or their their disability
uh papers Insurance whatever it was that you were and contributing to or maybe you expedited
a person's ability to get disability insurance or get the treatment they needed or whatever the
relationship was or whatever the case was you were managing right so think in terms of that
so so that's that's something to quantify while you might not be quantifying the actual benefit
you're giving me an understanding of how much volume and what influence you're having
as a result of being a case manager okay so the specificity in the bullet you're really looking
for what can I quantify well you know can you tell them backwards on the camera okay and then
for context give me order a magnitude you are telling a story in your resume wait we're going
to get the story tell here in a minute but you're telling a story give me the wow factor give me the
effect give me what happened as a result of you doing what you did so just to kind of recap these
I just from a resume standpoint make sure you are focusing on the great eight and you are also
focusing on the grade 8 in terms of your goals be specific in your bullets make sure you talk about
what happened as a result of me doing what I did what what happened as a result of what I did for
quantifications make sure that you are using them as a frame of reference right for context