Attach resume and send. Okay, fingers crossed. Hey, everyone. I'm Alex. Thanks
for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on the most common mistake most people
make when they are writing their resume. If you are looking for a new job, and
you are sending your CV to a potential employer, of course, you want to talk
about what you did in your past jobs, right? Now, employers, of course, they
will care about what you did, but they will care more about what you achieved
at your job. So what is the most common mistake people make? Well, let me step
away from the board just for a second. And you see "task". And here you see
"achievement". So the main problem that people have when they are writing about
their past jobs is that they write a task-based resume, instead of writing an
achievement-based resume. I'm going to tell you the difference in a moment. But
first, I want to tell you why an achievement-based resume is superior to
only listing your tasks at a previous job. So a task-based resume, it tells
the employer what you did at your past jobs. It doesn't tell them what you
accomplished. Now, with an achievement-based resume, you are
focusing on the results that you got at your past jobs, and the contributions
that you made to your past employers. Companies care about what you can bring
to their team. What will you accomplish if you go and work for their company.
This is why an achievement-based resume is vastly superior to a task-based
resume. Now, I don't want to say that you can't talk about your tasks -- of
course, you will have to talk about some of your tasks that you had, you know, at
your past jobs, because it's clearly unavoidable. But if you can make the
bulk, the majority of your resume achievement-based -- talk about results,
talk about contributions -- I guarantee you will have a higher chance of landing
the job that you are applying for.
Let's look at some examples of what I mean. And hopefully this can give you an
idea of how you can improve your resume right after this video. So let's say you
were an interviewer in your past job, you were in a management position at a
company and on your resume you write: "interviewed and trained new employees".
That's great. That is a very important job. But that is probably in the job
description for the new job that you're applying for. They want someone who
interviews and who trains new employees, if you are applying for a management
position, for example. But you this will not make your resume stand out. Almost
everybody applying for that type of job will have done this task. So what makes
you stand out? What is your core achievement at this past job? Well,
instead of saying that you interviewed and you trained new employees, you could
say that you streamlined employee onboarding process, and you increased HR
efficiency, you're using a strong verb like streamlined, which means you made
it like as simple as possible, which made the administrative Human Resources
process more efficient. So you achieved something, you got a result before you
got there. Maybe the management tasks were a bit of a mess. So you said no,
no, no, I'm going to make this easier. So I'm going to make a checklist of
things that I will do with each new employee, I'm going to make sure that
everyone has the same experience. And I'm going to make the process more
efficient. So "streamlined employee onboarding process", and "increased HR
efficiency" is much more attractive than "interviewed and trained new employees".
Let's move on to the next one. So: what if you negotiated contracts with
vendors? So vendors are business partners that you work with,
salespeople. Of course, if you're applying for a job where you have to
deal with vendors, with clients, business clients, specifically, then you
will need to know how to do this task. But so is everyone else who is
submitting their resume. To make your resume stand out, why don't you write
something like this instead: "Slashed vendor admin costs 20% by negotiating
prices and fees". So first you have the result: what happened? "Slashed vendor
admin costs by 20%" -- you're giving an exact number of a result, something
tangible, something your potential future employer can feel. And then
you're saying how you did that result. How did you do that? By negotiating
prices and fees with the vendor. So you're giving a result, and you're
talking about a contribution that you made to your past company.
Finally: "Provided quality service to customers". This can be in a store, this
can be over the phone. Okay. Now, of course, this is very general, it's very
bland, it doesn't say much. Okay. Anyone applying for a customer service
position, if they've had a customer service job in the past, will mention
this. Yeah, I provided quality service. What does that mean? Let's look at a
better way to say it. "Regularly surpassed sales targets, yielding
greater profits for the company." So if you work in a customer service job, you
probably have sales targets, not in all companies where customer service is a
thing. But in a majority of them or a large number of them, you have a sales
target. If you mentioned something that you regularly surpassed, you regularly
achieved and went even above the target that your boss set for you, that's going
to stand out. "Yielding", right, so creating greater profits for the
company. So you're saying, you know what, because of me, that company made
more money. If you are applying to work in a business, businesses care about
money. So you want to mention that, you know, to any potential future employer.
I hope this video has been useful. And maybe you're thinking now, all of my
past job experience on my resume is task-based. I only talk about like what
I did, not what I accomplished, you can change that now. And I guarantee that
you'll have a higher chance of landing the job that you want and that you're
applying for. So remember: focus on results, focus on contributions, focus
on achievements. Don't just talk about what you did. Talk about what you
accomplished. If you want to test your understanding of the material that we
did today, as always, you can check out the quiz on engvid.com. While you're
there, why don't you consider making a donation to our site, or check out any
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like, share, leave a comment, tell me: Are you going to change your resume? And
I might respond. Actually, I probably will respond. So please do that. And
I'll talk to you soon. Bye.