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Submitted by bliv26 on
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What is the best way to write a resume accomplishment bullet about a training presentation I've recently delivered?  Also, what is the best way to write an accomplishment bullet about hiring and on-boarding staff?

In my role I am required to deliver hour long trainings two or three times per month.  I am responsible for designing and delivering the presentations (the MT casts on presentations have been especially helpful).  However, I am struggling with how to write the action that led to the result.  E.g. "Successfully created and delivered a training presentation about...by..."

I am also responsible for hiring and on-boarding staff.  Each year I hire and on-board roughly 6-8 new staffs.  This includes overseeing the entire orientation process.  Any suggestions for writing accomplishment bullets for hiring and on-boarding new staffs?

Thanks, Brandon

wendii's picture
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I find the easiest way to think about this is to think 'how do I know that I did this task well?'

So for the presentations: do you get feedback? How do you know the people learnt what they're supposed to? Do you have to have certain number of people through the training each time and do you achieve that?

For the new hires: do you have quota you have to meet? Do you have a metric for speed of hire? Do you have a metric for how long it takes for them to be trained and productive?

(If you don't have metrics for any of this, start measuring!).

There's one other way to look at this which is sometimes helpful. How badly would you have to do it to be fired? That's your minimum standard. Now you know what's important, by how much are you exceeding that standard?

Wendii

cruss's picture
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Wendii,
 
I have the same issues with most of the 'accomplishments' on my CMD. I don't have any metrics for how well i've done anything, both historically and in my current role.
 
I work in IT (Desktop Support and System Administration) and I'm familiar with metrics for these IT jobs. The problem is that no one in my organization is tracking them and I don't have access to the data needed to track them myself. I can, and do, track numbers that say I "do" a lot of stuff but have no way to contextualize this on a resume.
 
I've asked this question before in other threads and had some good feedback but still haven't found a way to put some 'how well you did it' to my list of 'what you did'.
 
P.S. Since you have been recording the Career Tools casts, I can hear your voice when I read your forum and blog posts.

Canyon R

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I went back and read the old post you made. I'm going to take some guesses and ask some questions, and I may be off. Hopefully there's enough here to get you started.

How many problems did you resolve today/this week/this month?
Is it more or less than last month?
How many questions did you answer?
How quickly on average do you resolve problems?
How quickly can you answer a question?
Is it more or less than last month?
Have you set up any processes to make repetitive questions less common?
Have you set up any processes to allow yourself to answer questions/solve problems more quickly?
How many people do you serve? Has it gone up or down?
How many complaints do you get in a week/month?
Is that going up or down?
How many people are there doing your job? Has that gone up or down compared to the number of people you serve?

I *think* you're a high C, and you're wanting precision. You may not get it and that's ok. To the nearest 5% is fine, especially if you're recording metrics yourself (all those I've listed above, you can record yourself). In addition, if you can't quantify *every* accomplishment you're ok. Just try to quantify most of them.

Wendii

bliv26's picture
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Your suggestions for how to think about measuring these activities are helpful.  I plan to use the questions you posed as starting points for both of my questions.

I work for a small organization that does not measure as much as it should (unfortunately).  Can you recommend any books about developing metrics?

Brandon

wendii's picture
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cruss's picture
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Wendii,

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my question. Also, sorry to BLIV26 for hijacking your post. 

You are correct that I'm a high C (7117). I don't think my problem is lack of precision, I would be happy to have enough information to estimate within 5%. It is the case that I don't have answers to most of your questions. Even if I did I'm still not sure how put those answers into Accomplishment bullets for my resume.

For example, if I had numbers for "How many questions did you answer?" such as 78 questions last month and 62 questions this month.  Some how an accomplishment that read "21% reduction in questions asked by answering them really well." doesn't really seem like an accomplishment bullet to me. I don't understand what the 'business impact' of that is or how I would convey that. The reality of it is that how well I answer questions this month doesn't really have any impact on how many I may get next month. In fact I find that I get more not less questions because people seek me out instead of my teammates. The same is true for number of tickets or people I serve. The movement of those numbers up or down don't really relate to how well I do my job. 
 
I have rewritten this reply three times now and every time I read it I think I'm just complaining (probably just my High-D showing). This is a real concern for me and I spend a fair amount of time worrying about the quality of my accomplishments. I am going to start a new thread to ask a related question about accomplishments and praise. I have heard you mention that in a couple of cast but am not sure how that would work.
 
Thanks again for everyone's input on this topic.

Canyon R