How To Make Your Resume Stand Out With The Use Of Metrics? In the competitive job-hunting market, your resume serves as your advocate, your first impression to potential employers. But what if you could transform it from an ordinary list of duties to a captivating narrative of your accomplishments?
That’s where metrics come into play – it is the secret ingredient that turns mundane job descriptions into compelling stories of success. In this post, we’ll discuss the art of incorporating metrics into your resume, allowing you to stand amidst a sea- of other applicants and get the job you desire.
Let’s embark on a journey to supercharge your resume with the numbers that truly matter. In this post, we will discuss:
- Why you should add metrics to your resume
- How to add metrics to your resume
- What metrics should be included
- How should the metrics be incorporated into your resume
Before we delve deeper into this post, it is important to understand what metrics are: Since we are discussing metrics in the context of jobs, we will be talking about performance metrics.
What Are Performance Metrics?
Performance metrics are measurable data used to track progress within a business using activities, employee behavior, and productivity as key metrics.
Why Should I Add Metrics To My Resume?
You should add metrics to your resume to demonstrate the impact your work made on an organization, make your claims more believable, and show that you are a results-driven and action-oriented individual. Below are a few ways metrics help you stand out:
- Metrics Make Your Claims More Believable
On your resume, it is important to always aim to “show” instead of “tell. Recruiters come across many resumes that utilize overused buzzwords and phrases such as:
- Seasoned executive
- Self-motivated professional
- Entrepreneurial spirit
- Passionate, driven sales professional
- Goal oriented
Instead of using exaggerated language that may cause your reader to lose interest, aim to incorporate metrics that demonstrate these characteristics and increase your overall credibility.
- Metrics Show That You Are Results-Driven And Action-Oriented
Most importantly, metrics enable you to write accomplishment-driven bullet points and serve as a testament to the fact that you care about delivering results.
By adding metrics to your resume, you help recruiters and hiring managers get a much better sense of how you will be able to practically add value to their organizations.
How To Make Your Resume Stand Out With The Use Of Metrics
Adding metrics to your resume can significantly enhance its impact and effectiveness. Below is a step-by-step guide on How To Make Your Resume Stand Out With The Use Of Metrics to help you integrate metrics into your resume:
- Identify Relevant Metrics: Start by identifying key metrics that demonstrate your accomplishments and the impact you’ve made in your previous roles. Consider quantitative achievements such as sales figures, revenue generated, cost savings, percentage improvements, project completion times, etc.
- Choose the Right Sections: Determine the appropriate sections of your resume where you can incorporate metrics. Sections such as the summary/objective, professional experience, achievements, and education are good places to put metrics.
- Quantify Achievements: Whenever possible, quantify your achievements with specific numbers or percentages. For example, instead of saying “Increased sales,” you could say “Increased sales by 30% within six months.”
- Add Context: Along with the metrics, provide context to help the reader understand the significance of your achievements. Briefly explain the situation or challenge you faced, the actions you took, and the results you achieved.
- Use Action-Oriented Language: Use action verbs and power words to describe your accomplishments. Words like “achieved,” “improved,” “generated,” “reduced,” and “implemented” can convey a sense of proactivity and impact.
- Tailor Metrics to the Job: Customize the metrics you include based on the job you’re applying for. Highlight achievements that are most relevant to the position and demonstrate your ability to meet the employer’s needs.
- Prioritize Impactful Metrics: Focus on highlighting the most impactful metrics that showcase your skills, contributions, and value to potential employers. Quality is more important than quantity when it comes to including metrics on your resume.
- Format Clearly and Consistently: Organize your metrics in a clear and consistent format that is easy to read and understand. Use bullet points to list achievements and maintain a clean layout throughout your resume.
- Proofread and Edit: Finally, proofread your resume carefully to ensure accuracy and clarity. Make sure your metrics are presented accurately and effectively, without any spelling or grammatical errors.
Which Metrics Should I Include On My Resume?
You can find relevant metrics to add to your resume no matter what type of role or industry you work in. Consider incorporating metrics related to sales and revenue, profitability, costs, people management, marketing, partnerships, performance and operations, and data analysis.
To some extent, the metrics you have available will depend on how performance is measured in your current role or industry. However, even if you aren’t evaluated based on specific figures, you can still brainstorm ways to quantify certain elements of your role.
A writer, for example, can quantify how many articles he wrote or how much web traffic his content was able to drive. A teacher can quantify how many students she taught or how much her students improved their standardized test scores as a result of her efforts.
As you prepare your resume, reflect on the categories of metrics and KPIs below
• Sales & Revenue Metrics
By how much did you increase revenue on a month-over-month or year-over-year basis (either in total or for a given product), how often did you execute sales campaigns, and how many customers did you bring in since your employment?
• Profitability & Cost Metrics
Metrics to include here can include:
- By how much did you improve the company’s net profit?
- By how much did you improve the profitability of a department?
- By how much did you decrease the cost of carrying out a project?
- By how much did you reduce the cost of production and operations?
• People & HR-related Metrics
Metrics to add may include:
· How many people did you interview or hire?
· How many people did you lead, or how many teams did you oversee?
• Marketing Metrics
Metrics here might include:
- Cost per Conversion: By how much were you able to reduce cost per conversion?
- ROI: What was the return on investments of your advertising campaigns?
- Traffic: How much were you able to increase store or online traffic?
- Content: How many articles did you write or ads did you create? Do you have any relevant engagement metrics?
- Emails: What was the email open/response rate you achieved?
- Phone Calls: How many leads did you contact and what percentage were you able to convert?
How Should I Incorporate Metrics In My Resume?
When adding metrics to your resume, be sure to put them into context for the person reading your resume, this helps them understand exactly why a given metric is relevant or impressive.
To provide adequate context, make sure to answer the following questions for your readers:
- When (did you achieve the metric)?
- How (did this metric benefit the organization)?
- Why (was improving this metric or KPI important)?
Below, we provide examples of how you can add context to your metrics by asking yourself these questions.
- When?
- Before: Increased sales by 10%
- After: Increased sales by 10% in the first two months of entering the role
- Before: Signed 4 new hotel development deals
- After: Signed 4 new hotel development deals in 2020, which are scheduled to open by Q4 2021
- How?
- Before: Decreased project completion time by 25%
- After: Decreased project completion time by 25% by creating a new project management workflow in Asana
- Before: Reduced cost of goods sold by 12%
- After: Reduced cost of goods sold by 12% via contract renegotiations with 4 major suppliers and employee training to reduce waste
- Why?
- Before: Wrote 15 blog posts
- After: Wrote 15 blog posts to improve website traffic via SEO optimization strategies
- Before: Developed and rolled out 4 new Excel forecasting models
- After: Developed and rolled out 4 new Excel forecasting models that reduced month-end reporting time by 30%
Notice the addition of context in italics. It helps to give specificity to what you are trying to say.
Conclusion
In conclusion, integrating metrics into your job resume is more than just a tactic; it’s a powerful strategy for showcasing your value and achievements to potential employers. By quantifying your accomplishments, you provide tangible evidence of your impact and effectiveness in previous roles. You can also illustrate the value you will be bringing to the company.
Metrics not only grab the attention of hiring managers but also offer insights into your capabilities and potential contributions to their organization. In today’s competitive job market, a metrics-driven resume sets you apart as a results-oriented professional who is ready to make a measurable difference. Embrace the power of metrics, and watch as your resume becomes a compelling testament to your career success.
