Explain Detail-oriented

"detail oriented" is a lot like "good with people" - it doesn't tell me very much.  Everyone has "above average" customer service skills on a resume.

Better to show an accomplishment where a focus on the little things mattered - maybe like:

Responsible for ensuring documents are printed with zero errors  or

Achieved a 20% increase in customer satisfaction ratings by paying attention to small details such as vacuuming cupholders as well as floor mats (say for a car detailer....seriously, this just happened to me &  I LOVED it!)

Being detail oriented is not a method; it's a characterization of someone who does not make many mistakes (because they closely check for them) and who thinks problems multiple iterations through in small detail. It's the opposite of flying by the seat of one's pants.

To put it in DISC, it's a high C, not a high I.

...and everybody says they're good looking and have a good sense of humor too.  (I think I just made a When Harry Met Sally reference, there).

I'm a software QA manager, so the people I hire have to be detail oriented and notice the small stuff, or they will miss bugs.    In my world, sometimes the smallest hints lead you to find the biggest software defects.  An accomplishment like that might be:

• Prevented a $1M loss from occurring in production, by identifying during test that the firm's payable account number was recorded incorrectly in a new software module.   -or-
• Scripted and executed a test suite which detected 99.97% of defects in the system under test, with the severity of escaped defects trending lower over time.  (In other words, for every 10,000 defects, this person or team missed 3, but the ones that they missed this year were less severe than ones that escaped detection in prior years.)

In reality, though, most resumes don't have accomplishments listed that way.  So, if you are looking for detail oriented people, you might have to rely on more subtle cues than that.  For example, everybody's resume SAYS they are detail oriented, but only some of their resumes are completely free of typographical, grammatical, or formatting errors.  Funny side note, I once saw this on a resume:  "detial oriented".  Um, nope, you're not.   That was too good to put in the trash pile - I kept it for a long time, next to the one where the person said they were good at "deli gating".  Not sure I've ever seen a deli gate.

I hear deli gates are closed after 5:00.

I kept thinking here whether it  is true that people working on software development "needs to be detail oriented and notice the small stuff, or they will miss bugs".   

I believe a high I and a high D can also detact a bug, but they will do that differently than a high C would do.  At least I am a high D and a high I and I can detact a bug in a spreadsheet sometimes in a second (and I used to detact bugs on codes too 10 years ago) because I see there is a number that is not coherent with some other number so I go directly where the problem is. 

I do think it is essential to have high C´s, and probably the majority high C´s within a software development group, but some high I´s and D´s and S´s will only add to it.  Or not?

I think one does not need to be a high C´s to care for details and to care about delivering the work without errors. 

I don´t know what other people´s opinions and experiences are, but I seem to get better results getting some balance of communication and personality characteristics within the teams, even in highly technical teams which need to be concern about the details of the calculations.

Nara

Not a high C at all & I can also spot a bug, just as a former direct who was off the charts High C who couldn't spot a bug if it sat on her head and danced a jig.

DISC isn't the be all and end all and if we hired based only on that it would be similar to only hiring men, or mothers or Americans.  In other words, making generalizations about a person rather than considering their actual strengths and weaknesses.