Facts help sell your career accomplishments
Q: I know that having good work experience is important if I want to grow my career. I have spent time keeping my accomplishments current and attending training classes even though I worked from home for the last few years. My question is, how can I use my accomplishments and training to stand out from the crowd when I start job searching?
A: It sounds like you are doing a great job managing your career, which often gets lost when work gets hectic. All the efforts you are making in documenting and listing your accomplishments will pay off. However, it would help if you strategically use them.
There are strong candidates in the job market who have made enormous contributions to their employers, and without their influence, the businesses would not have been as successful. Yet, the key issue in managing your career is how well you market your accomplishments.
For instance, the best time to start networking is when you are not pressured into landing a job but instead focused on meeting new people and building relationships. Learning how to use facts when building rapport keeps you memorable.
The problem that often hinders people when growing their career is sounding like everyone else. For example, every position posted will have keywords in the job description that tell you what the employer needs, the requirements for the role, and experience.
Most job candidates tend to focus on listing duties or responsibilities in their resume that are general in nature, hoping the employer will read through their information to generate interest. Listing responsibilities is a mistake that will keep you from standing out from the crowd when needing to make a good impression with others.
Regardless of where you want to take your career, consider using facts to support your accomplishments to make a strong impression. For example, managing a team of sales associates is a general statement used with accomplishments. If you added facts, it could look like this, managing a team of eight sales associates that grew revenue by 30% within the first three months, exceeding the number one competitor in the field.
Using facts automatically adds credibility to your experience without coming across as bragging. Since most see bragging as a turn-off, they tend to underplay their accomplishments.
There can be a thin line between self-promoting and bragging.
The latter can be perceived as arrogance; however, it diminishes the arrogance factor when you back up your accomplishments with evidence. Using facts when talking about your background helps to verify your expertise. Facts give you talking points for more in-depth discussions.
Using facts automatically adds credibility to your experience without coming across as bragging.