Don’t make this mistake on your resume!

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.