Accomplishment statements power-up your the skills and experiences in your resume. Impress your potential employer with your brilliant accomplishments!

Accomplishment Statements: A Powerful Way to Tell Your Career Story

By A Portland Career, and edited by Suzie Sherman

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Gone are the days of just listing generic job duties on your resume or cover letter. Recruiters and hiring managers want to see your accomplishments – what makes you stand out as a candidate among hundreds of other applicants for the job. Accomplishment statements illustrate your effectiveness in your previous jobs, and highlight the qualitative and quantitative results you’ve achieved.

Accomplishment statements make your “job responsibilities” pop off the page of your resume. It is critical to match your skills and accomplishments to the job description you’re applying to, and powerful accomplishment statements are the way to do it.

This exercise will help you build your accomplishments into the professional experience section of your resume, but you can also use them throughout your job search to create effective cover letters, and to craft strong talking points for your job interviews. You can even feature these powerful statements on your LinkedIn profile and other social media to attract the eye of recruiters!

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This article is the fourth in our series on writing successful resumes and cover letters. Read ’em all:

Then, of course, you need to sit down and do some writing. Unless this is a big challenge for you, and you’re feeling stuck. In that case…

Accomplishment Statements with Joanie Donnelly

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In this video, Joanie Donnelly, our Resume and Cover Letter Expert, tells you how to craft powerful accomplishment statements to get the most impact out of your resumes.

Click the button find out how Joanie can help you write winning resumes and cover letters.

Challenge, action, result

Effective accomplishment statements incorporate the “CAR” method: Challenge, Action, Result. Not just a plainly stated list of the typical duties of your previous jobs or volunteer positions, your list of accomplishments illustrates the challenges you’ve faced at work, and how you’ve prevailed over them! Each accomplishment should be in an active voice and tell a story of your glorious achievements!

The Challenge (or problem) you met and solved
The Action you took to solve it
The Result you produced

Action verbs and tangible, or measurable, results are the keys to writing powerful statements like these:

“Managed twelve team members on a national branding design project”
“Reduced costs on customer service representative onboarding by 15%”
“Provided excellent customer support on more than 200 technical queries per night with a 72% resolved rate”

If you are applying for a new line cook job at a local bistro, your potential employer already knows the tasks involved in the job. But what they want to know is: how did you handle those responsibilities? In this way, a bullet point of “Vegetable prep,” an obvious, rote responsibility, then becomes a specific action item with a quantifiable result:

“Prepped vegetables for salads and soup stock on a nightly basis to meet the need for a 300 customer volume per shift.”

Whenever it’s possible, make sure to quantify! If the accomplishment is less numerically concrete, use descriptive statements to illustrate the achievement:

“Achieved ongoing media responsiveness by building partnerships with local radio stations.”

The CAR method can enhance your preparation for interviews, too!

Sample resume accomplishment statements

Following are strong examples of accomplishment statements from successful job seekers we’ve coached over the years, across a variety of fields. Use these as an inspiring template as you think about your own work accomplishments and begin to formulate accomplishment statements for your resumes and cover letters.

For Creatives

Received national award for creating video, audio, and print content targeted to youth-focused environmental “edutainment” platforms.
Increased sales by $10K with an exhibition of paintings, collages, and sculptures in small galleries.
Stimulated online discussions about social issues with interviews of famous musicians, actors, and activists (including Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, and Woody Harrelson).
Invented video-assist device customized for stop-motion animation which became a commercial product manufactured by Animal Tool Works, Inc.

For Business

Reduced postal costs 50% by negotiating a new service agreement with UPS Mail Innovations.
Increased revenue $500K annually by implementing revised sales goals in collaboration with senior vice president.
Designed full color catalog containing QR code ordering capabilities for all new product lines. Boosted overall sales by 30%.
Saved $6M by discontinuing implementation of a midrange merchandising software package.

For Technology

Increased website traffic by building promotional landing pages using HTML, CSS and Javascript.
Chaired team meetings to identify and resolve IT and operational issues with minimal impact on customer retention.
Achieved consistent positive usability test results with new design of user interface using HTML5, CSS3, and SCSS.
Improved operational efficiency and reduced need for technical support with simultaneous project management of 10–15 projects.

Be specific: When writing accomplishment statements for high-tech jobs, it is extremely important to include the required tools, languages, and platforms listed in the job description.

For Nonprofits And Government

Earned City of Salem Community Partnership Award by successfully convening and facilitating task-force meetings that addressed complex issues to develop a strategic plan for the City of Salem Senior Center.
Improved ridership percentages by 2.4% annually for five years through educational campaigns.
Gained prominent media coverage for first HIV prevention program in the region designed for Black gay and bisexual men.
Enrolled 80 new members in under nine months by implementing unique social service learning program and increasing accessibility options for senior adults.
Managed $4.5M intercity rail program, quickly acquiring a reputation for leadership skills and as a strategic messaging expert.

Awarded Fulbright IIE Doctoral Dissertation Award, Wenner Gren Foundation Predoctoral Grant, and CUNY Graduate School Dissertation Fellowship.
Earned highest possible evaluations from students, faculty peers, and administrators as teacher and advisor for high levels of support, knowledge, and organization.
Achieved 80% patient clean and sober rate two years after program completion, highest in center.
Increased family reconciliation rates by successfully mediating conflicts between runaway teens and parents.

Draft Your Accomplishment Statements

Think about your work experience and the activities you were most proud of for each job. And, in accomplishment statements, it’s okay to brag a little! What was the challenge, the action you took, and the result? Save and print the following chart to craft your accomplishment statements. While this chart has room for you to brainstorm accomplishments for many positions, it is fine to set a goal of articulating three to five key accomplishments that are most relevant to each specific new job you are applying for.

Final thoughts on accomplishment statements

The accomplishment statements on your resume are your chance to brag a little about your achievements in your work or volunteer life. The challenge, action, result structure allows you to tell a story, situating you in your hero’s journey, encountering and tackling all obstacles! Use this exercise to think about the work you’re most proud of, and prepare three to five accomplishment statements for each unique application process for a new job.

Key takeaways

Simply listing job duties on a resume is passé. Wow your potential employer with accomplishment statements: a list of challenges at previous jobs that you bested!
Accomplishment statements follow a challenge, action, results structure.
Whenever possible, try to quantify your results or illustrate them with concrete examples.
You will primarily use your accomplishment statements on your resume and cover letters, but they are great to keep on hand as talking points in your interviews and in your LinkedIn and social media profiles, too!

Accomplishment Statements: A Powerful Way to Tell Your Career Story

By A Portland Career, and edited by Suzie Sherman

Accomplishment Statements with Joanie Donnelly

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Challenge, action, result