Question for you: what stands out more?: “The Oilers won their game against the Flames.” or “The Oilers beat the Flames 7-2.”
Probably the one with the score line added in, right? It’s a bit more impressive, and provides more context!
The same goes for writing your experience bullet points on a resume.
Numbers, stats, data and metrics are a key tool in making your resume stand out from the rest. Numbers help recruiters understand the impact you could make to their organization, and provide some credibility to the work you did in previous roles.
Without numbers, you are primarily discussing previous responsibilities and not your accomplishments.
Examples of Numbers:
- Budget managed
- Number of new clients you brought in
- Cost savings on a project
- Increase in pageviews or in social media engagements
- Customer satisfaction
- Test scores
- Response time
- Number of employees managed
- And many others!
Depending on the roles you’ve held, numbers will vary from person to person. But, the right data that is relevant and helpful to the role you aspire to can make a huge difference in keeping the hiring manager engaged, and you getting that interview call!
How can you use numbers effectively? Here’s a few ideas:
use specific numbers
Do you remember the exact budget you managed for a project? Or how much money you saved? Use that information!
*In particular, showing how you helped save money or time is a great way to stand out! Everyone wants to save, and if you’re capable of helping a company do that – make that known by showing some stats from previous roles!
Examples:
“Managed $20,000 budget for company-wide retreat, coming in $3,000 under budget.”
“Implemented new Google Reviews response procedure, which decreased response time to a maximum of 2 hours since the review was posted.”
USE PERCENTAGES
Percentages are a great way to still show improvements you instituted in previous roles, but can be most effective when translating smaller numbers or smaller growth. Perhaps you are coming from a smaller organization, where the impact isn’t in the hundreds and thousands, or maybe you are coming from a more structured organization where change wasn’t as easy to implement. Whatever the scenario, a percentage can better translate the impact your work created when the exact numbers are a little more understated to those outside of the role you were in.
Examples:
“Created and employed new facility-wide staff engagement strategy, raising employee involvement in organization activities by 50%.”
“Instituted new client waiver protocol for hotel guests, reducing paperwork by 80%.”
Use range or frequency
If you’re including work experience from several years ago, or even several months, it can be very hard to remember the exact details of how much you saved an organization, how many people you managed, etc. And that’s okay! If that’s the case, use a range, or frequency of a task, to capture the data – it still provides the hiring manager an idea of the quantifiable impact you had.
Frequency is also a great tool to indicate how much you can do in high-volume roles.
Examples:
“Wrote, designed and published 2-4 social media posts daily on Instagram and Facebook.”
“Conducted daily inspections on 3-5 company-owned vehicles to ensure the safety and security of employees using the equipment.”
Use rankings or superlatives
Did you set a milestone in a previous role? Were you or your team deemed the best at something? Data and stats don’t necessarily need to be strictly digits. Those titles and accomplishments means you were the best at something, and can be celebrated if it’s applicable to the job you are searching for.
You can even use superlatives such as “best” “top” “highest” to get your message across.
Example:
“Initiated new donor outreach strategy for university’s faculty of psychology, which garnered the highest new donor uptake that year across all departments.”
“Engaged new writers for the kinesiology department to write for the sports section, resulting in the largest jump in yearly engagements across all sections.”
A Final Tip
Though the numbers themselves are important, make sure you are also addressing how you got those results!
Use action words to help you describe the role you played, such as: managed, created, implemented, updated, etc.
~ written by Lucy Fox
We hope this little bit of advice helps you in your job search and application. If you would like to receive more resume tips as they’re written, please sign up for the monthly newsletter, feel free to bounce around the site in the Resume Tips category, or click here to learn more about the service.
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