Having a great resume is one of the many important tools that will improve your chances of getting selected or shortlisted. As the number of graduates increases, the competition for many job positions is also increasing drastically. While the competition is increasing day by day, the opportunity to set yourself apart is increasing as well. Most job-seekers are listing their responsibilities and day-to-day tasks but it’s the achievements in your resume that differentiate you from other candidates.
If you want to get ahead of the competition, highlight your greatest achievements and accomplishments. To do so, many online tools and application programs have a variety of templates and formats. But to stand out from the crowd, your resume needs to show what EXACTLY you achieved in the company you worked in. Here are 10 Ways to highlight achievements in your resume.
10 Ways to Highlight Achievements on Your Resume
1. The Three Ps
The three Ps turn out to be projects, publications, and patents. These are some of the topmost and most highly effective ways to highlight achievements in your resume. The 3 Ps demonstrate the application of the attained skills practically. And as you all might have known practical knowledge turns out to be the number one attribute that any company looks forward to seeing in an applicant or job seeker.
The first P (Project) happens to be the easiest to fill. The ideas for projects are numerous both from an online and offline perspective. Many online platforms are offering guided projects right from scratch. With experience, you can even build your own with a self-plan and idea. Uploading such projects on online repositories such as GitHub is considered one of the best practices to do. You may also save your project online and provide a direct link to the page on Linkedin.
The second P (Publication) is comparatively difficult to fill. A publication involves activities such as writing a scientific paper or journal and publishing it on sites such as IEEE, CSI, Springer, IOSR, and so on, writing a blog on an official website or even publishing an article.
The third P (Patent) happens to be the most difficult to fill. A patent is an official license to a product that you solely own and excludes others from making use of it. So if you can fill this then that would mean that you are far ahead of many others. Usually experienced employees or external parties hosting online applications android apps or other resources tend to have filled this field. However, the other Ps are also equally effective in their way.
2. LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn has been the secret weapon through which many employees, freshers, students, and even professionals have been benefiting for a long time. A platform that has been impacting millions of employees for a long time. Linkedin is unique in many ways from other social media not only in terms of the content it provides but also in the ease of maintaining close relationships with an organization.
Linkedin can be used to receive job notifications, talk to employers, search for positions, get notified of events, and so on. Thousands of jobs are posted daily. But here comes the important part, creating a profile that stands out from the crowd.
Creating a standout profile on Linkedin will not only invite a lot of viewers but will also attract potential employers to find themselves the right candidate for providing a career opportunity. There is also another field of Linkedin called Linkedin Learning which helps in learning various skills, whether technical or non-technical.
So, there’s yet another lesson for you. Create a profile and start updating it with the latest details and make it complete and stand out. Make sure you link it to your resume because when you link your Linkedin profile, recruiters will be able to see your achievements, recommendations, and skill endorsements from colleagues, clients, and managers.
3. Achievements and Awards
The title says it all. Achievements and Awards demonstrate your skills on a whole new level. If you want to showcase your skills to a potential employer, list every achievements and award you received on a professional level in your resume. If you have been competing in official competitions online organized by coding platforms like HackerEarth, Hackerrank, and Codechef or any other major testing platforms related to your domain for a long time and achieved a major milestone at any point then this field will be the perfect one to showcase your talent and skill.
The other kinds of achievements related would be attaining badges, finishing in the top 500 or top 100, and so on. Also, employees who attained various promotions tend to use this field the best. But when you showcase your talent as a fresher that’s how you make a very good first impression.
4. Leadership Skills
If you think you’re a born leader, this is where you flex your skill. This is one of those rare fields where you express your dedication, passion, and management skills which are in high demand be it in any kind of organization.
There are many ways to showcase yourself as an emerging leader and put it as one of the achievements on your resume. As a student, you may co-ordinate for student bodies, ambassador for a company, and lead events such as workshops, contests, etc to establish yourself as a leader. It is suggestible to make use of every single opportunity to prove yourself.
Volunteering is also one of the best ways to take your leadership skills to the next level. There are many organizations right from Google to TEDx offering volunteering opportunities. So, there’s another lesson to try to make use of any opportunity that involves showcasing your leadership skills to take your resume to the next level.
5. Online Certifications
Online certifications are offered by a vast number of platforms these days. While some of them are paid several others are offered for free. Based on your comfort zone you may choose a few relevant ones which help you showcase your best skills or the skills you are passionate about.
While it is true that you should have them it is also important that you don’t have too many. It is advisable to have 4 of them at a maximum stretch typically. Having too many not only decreases the space you will have remaining to fill other fields in your resume but also increases the doubt in your mind in terms of confidently being able to showcase every one of the skills mentioned in those certifications.
If you want to know what kind of hard skills can impress recruiters, check out our article 7 Key Technical Skills For Your Resume.
6. Job-Specific Skills
There are many skills that all applicants have in common and there are others that are specifically mentioned for a particular job. These are job-specific skills and having at least a small collection of them may be adequate to increase your chances of getting shortlisted. So always read the qualifications required for the job completely. Try to analyze the generalized skills and the ones specialized. After reading several notifications you will get a clear picture of that note.
Next try to sort out those specialized skills in terms of the ones you are confident in, partially confident, and not confident. After making that analysis list the skills based on your analysis in your resume.
7. Work Experience
Now, this is one of those fields that most of us as freshers would like to leave empty. But in many cases, this one field may turn out to be a lifesaver. So you mustn’t leave this field empty. There are many opportunities to gain work experience and finally get this field filled up. The opportunities are available both online and offline. The offline opportunities like volunteering in non-profit organizations, completing short-term internships, being an active member of student bodies, etc.
Whereas online opportunities include volunteering educational content on sites such as GitHub and IEEE, Digital Internships, completing projects, etc. So make sure that you use any of those opportunities to get the field filled up by the time you start applying and that will complete your next big step to add value to your resume.
8. Use Relevant Keywords
This is a vital point if you want to highlight your achievements and improve your resume as it helps in optimizing the keywords for the applicant tracking system (ATS). This system is used by recruiters for finding out the perspective and suitable candidate for a particular position. Adding correct keywords in your resume makes it at top of the list hence, the recruiters can easily track it down and call you for an interview. There are many ways to find the best keywords for your resume, and some of them are:
- Google “industry” related keywords and make a list of relevant ones
- Do check the job listing for particular keywords
- You can also use the free version of ATS to scan your resume for keywords
- Use industry-specific terms to demonstrate your familiarity with your work
9. Add Hobbies and Interests
This section is mostly avoided by people but it can be a great point of conversation between the interviewer and the candidate. People mostly do not add relevant hobbies in their resume making this section quite boring but this not should be done. Adding interest and hobbies showcases your versatile skills and give you a chance to share more about yourself. It provides a larger picture of accomplishments, revealing many things about your personality.
However, the interviewer is interested in the professional skills of the candidate but if your hobby is helping to enhance your skills then it can be a positive thing for you. Always segregate the hobbies and interests according to the position, for example, if going for any creative field (social media handler or graphic designer), then add–reading, sketching, creative writing, yoga, meditation, etc. If going for some technical field, then add– playing games, building websites, designing apps, etc.
10. Add Action Verbs
As we all know that action verbs are the most impactful verbs and can help in strengthening your resume by just adding a few of them. The right word can convey a lot, such as skills, accomplishments, expertise, etc. Also, these words grab the attention and can describe responsibilities in simple words. You can use many action verbs, for example, implemented, managed, developed, Conceptualized, Launched, Strategized, Programmed, Coded, and many others. Using an action verb helps in adding quality to your resume and expresses the impact in the items of degree.
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Final Thoughts
When it comes to impressing recruiters with a perfect resume, nothing beats the achievements in your resume. You can list them in such a way that you don’t come off as an egoist and own your success in a productive manner. Build an outstanding resume, stand out from the crowd, and grab the most-demanding and high-paying job quickly.
FAQs
Q1. How do you highlight key achievements on a resume?
Here’re the few steps you should take while highlighting key achievements on a resume –
- Include your achievements in the work experience section.
- Showcase your best results whenever possible.
- Describe your best accomplishments.
Q2. Do resumes need pictures?
Resumes don’t need to have photos, one must avoid it. It should only contain your experience, skills, eductional bakground in a concise and professional manner.
Q3. What are 2 examples of achievements?
The best 2 examples of achievements which can be given in your resume are-
- Got an A-grade in any online certification course
- TEDx Speech, etc.
