Work experience is an important ‘asset’ for any candidate applying for a job. It goes on to address employers requirement of past work experience for most skilled positions.

Most candidates in their resume, disclose past appointments by simply stating the name of the company (employer), the position occupied, an outline of work done, and the dates of joining and leaving.

Sure, the said information is essential but not ‘all’ that would give you an edge over others.

The most important thing that appears to be missing for prospective employer is to know what you achieved for yourself and your past employer during your time. And there is no way for the employer to know unless you disclose your achievements as a part of your work experience.

Mentioning achievements is most likely to help employers to identify if you can be the right candidate for the job. Furthermore, for an achievement-oriented individual, its not difficult to capture the way in which you ‘made a difference’ in your past appointments. All you need to do is to think hard and come up with at least one achievement for each appointment.

In a nutshell, a statement of achievement is made up of ‘action’ and ‘result’. The action part shows what did you do alone or as a part of the team, the result part describes what was achieved.

Example? Suppose you are an accountant who implemented a new computerised accounting package in your organisation which reduced the time in processing monthly final accounts from two weeks to three days.

In the above example, the ‘action’ is the implementation of accounting software package and the ‘result’ was reducing the time in processing monthly accounts.

Another example? As a programmer you were part of a team which developed a web site for a book shop from which orders and deposits can be accepted directly, improving the sales by 10 per cent in the first year.

The most important thing to remember while writing action-result statements is to be ‘specific’. You need to ‘quantify’ results whether it is reducing processing time from two weeks to three day or increasing sales by 10 per cent. The ‘qualitative’ factors such as improving processes and procedures can also be mentioned but even for these an effort should be made for results achieved.

Apart from past appointment you can extend the same principle to other activities in your past life. If you organised an event say so, if you did some voluntary work say how you made a difference.

What if you cannot think of any achievement at all?

Well, congratulations for facing a truth. Address this deficiency by becoming more achievement-oriented. Look out for something that would ‘make a positive difference in your workplace’ starting now, it would look good on your resume and will give courage to achieve greater things in life.