Interview Tips: How to Describe Your Achievements
Actions speak louder than words. If you have only words, start with action verbs. And spice them up with numbers.
This week, in a debriefing after a mock interview with my guest, we spent time discussing how we can better present our key achievements. How not to sound bleak, boring, or vague. How to present one's achievements in a way that is both relevant and engaging.
In this article:
The right mindset to reflect on your achievements
The ARCH model to describe your achievements
A tip for hiring managers: right action verbs are more important than the "right stuff"
Solutions when your achievements seem difficult to quantify
Your actions after reading this article
First, let's make sure we start off on the right foot, with the right mindset.
Your resume and your interview are not about you
The most important thing to understand that your resume and your interview are not about you.
I like how Ladders Resume Guide frames it:
If there’s one trick to getting your resume right, it’s understanding that your resume is not about you. Sure, it’s made up of your achievements, background, experiences and credentials, but it’s not about you. It’s a professional advertisement, targeted toward your future boss. It’s about the benefits your future boss gets from hiring you. So while it sure feels like it’s all about your favourite topic -- you and your experiences and your background and your journey and your adventures -- it’s not… Your resume is about your future boss’ needs and the benefits she’ll obtain by hiring you for the role…
The boss’ seat is 180 degrees in the other direction. A boss is looking for output, not input. A boss is looking for outcomes, not duties and responsibilities. A boss wants to know the end of the story, the bottom line, the score at the end of the game, not the feelings you had while delivering them.
Nothing describes the outcomes better than action verbs followed by quantifiable results.
The ARCH Model to describe your achievements
The first part of the statement is key and non-negotiable. It says what you accomplished in your role. ACTION verbs first. Your statement always starts with an action verb in the past tense, followed by a direct object and a quantifiable RESULT. Remember: "managed" is not an action verb in the sense that it is vague and static, and signals no positive change, no movement in the right direction. When I hear or read "I was responsible for", it gives me the same impression.
The second part is the CONTEXT. If you accomplished something in a tough environment or under crazily tight deadlines or were the first among your peers, or in an environment close to the role you are interviewing for, mention it here. It will give more weight to your achievement, will make it sound more palpable and more relevant.
Last but not least comes HOW you did it. You may leave it out, or keep it in. If you keep it in, keep it simple. As much as possible, try to make it sound like a hook, like your "trade secret" that you can further disclose to the interviewer if she is curious.
Below are a few examples, one for each of the 8 key themes that describe accomplishments on the job.
The ARCH model to describe your achievements
There is a wide choice of action verbs that you can use to make your accomplishments shine. Muse offers an extensive list of 185 action verbs that you can use to describe our achievements if you
Led a project
Brought a project to life
Saved the company time or money
Increased Efficiency, Revenue, or Customer Satisfaction
Changed or improved something
Managed a team
Brought in partners, funding, resources
Supported customers
Were a research machine
Wrote or communicated
Oversaw or regulated
Achieved something
Hiring managers: Look for the right verbs, not the "right stuff"
Looking for the right action verbs on a resume or in an interview can be key to hiring the right person. I like a story Clayton Christensen shared in "How Will You Measure Your Life".
Two years into his start-up CPS Technologies, they were looking for a vice-president of Operations to grow their operations out of the lab into production in their new plant. The final short-list had two people. Candidate A, referred by the VC on their board. Candidate A was executive vice president of operations for a multibillion dollar global business unit. Candidate B was the former boss of one of their most respected engineers. He has always been on the front line, had just shut down two plants and opened a new plant three months earlier for a family-owned company. He did not have a college degree.
The board was divided: senior managers preferred Candidate B, venture capitalists on board - Candidate A. In the end, they chose Candidate A and paid a lot of money to relocate him from Tokyo to Boston.
He was a nice man, but he badly managed the ramp up of the process and the plant. We had to ask him to resign after eighteen months. By that time, Candidate B had taken another job, so we had to initiate yet another search.
Candidate A presided over a massive operation, but one that was in a steady state. He had never started and built anything before - and as a consequence, he knew nothing of the problems that one encounters when starting up a new factory and scaling production of a new process. Furthermore, because of the scale of his operation, Candidate A had a large number of direct reports. He managed through them, rather than working shoulder by shoulder with them.
When we compared the candidates' résumés, Candidate A won hands-down. He had the "right stuff" - the adjectives about him just blew Candidate B out of the water. But that didn't make him right for us. Had we looked for the past-tense verbs on their résumés, however, Candidate B would have won hands-down - because the résumé would have shown that he had taken the right courses in the school of experience… He had wrestled with problems that the rest of us did not even know we were going to face.
Or, in other words, he had the right processes to do the job. In expressing a preference for the more polished candidate, we biased ourselves toward resources over the processes.
When it's difficult to quantify
Daniel Porot in one of his famous Beep Beep Books gives great advice on how to describe your achievements when you have difficulties to quantify them.
(1) Impossible or very difficult to quantify
Use the catastrophe approach. Assume that you had to be replaced in your job for a period of 6 months by someone who happened to be very inefficient and unprofessional. List the 2 to 3 catastrophes that might occur because of this person. Quantify the impact of those catastrophes (in terms of cost, money, number of customers lost, mistakes made, number of employees who left the company, number of clients who went to your competition...) Then, turn each one of those “Catastrophes” into “Non-catastrophes” - or “Successes”.
(2) You don’t remember the data, data is not accessible or secret
Use the pendulum approach. Ask someone (a friend or relative) to interview you and to suggest a very small figure and ask: “Is it more than 10?” If you say “Yes”, then he/she should suggest a very high figure and ask: “Is it more than 1,000,000?” If you say “No”, he should then call a small figure (bigger than the preceding one though) etc. Once he has found the approximate number, for instance, “3,000” reduce by 1/3 (to be sure not to exaggerate and to tell the truth), hence 2,000. You then could say or write: “... It was more than 2,000” or alternatively “... It was 2,000 +...”.
(3) You did only part of the work
First, give the big picture of the project you worked on and mention/underline that it included 5 phases/stages.
For instance say: “This was a 5,000,000 £€$ project/investment that included 5 phases/stages”.
Then you may say. “I was given full responsibility for phase/stage # 2. I succeeded in completing it in less than 30% of the time allocated and I reached the 7 objectives that were set”.
(4) The program collapsed / suspended / was stopped
If you were not responsible for it, there is no reason for you to carry the burden. You may say: “...For strategic reasons... For a reason out of my span of responsibility... For profitability reasons... To avoid a major loss... The board of directors/the general manager suspended this project”.
(5) I was in a team or led a team
It is usually a good thing to say if you were working in a team. This highlights your social skills, the fact that you are a team member/player, your leadership skills. On top of it, you show you are a person who tells the truth (by not trying to take all the glory)!!!
Your Actions
For every role you have had so far, describe 2-3 key achievements using the ARCH model.
Update your résumé so that each professional experience section has 2-3 bullet points with your achievements. Always start with action verbs.
Illustration: word cloud generated from action verbs by Word Art