There are proper and improper ways to list accomplishments on your resume, which can help you land more interviews and higher-paying jobs.
And a lot of job seekers lose out on a great opportunity because they don’t know how to properly highlight past successes and accomplishments on a resume.
Up next, we’ll examine:
- What kinds of achievements should you list on your resume?
- 35+ examples of accomplishments on resumes
- The two locations on your CV where achievements should be listed to grab hiring managers’ attention
What Are Good Accomplishments for a Resume?
The most impressive achievements to list on your resume are those related to the positions you’re currently looking for.
(When choosing which accomplishments are most appropriate to list, always refer to the job description. This will make you more distinctive from other applicants.
Your work accomplishment examples should show a hiring manager how your prior experience equipped you to take on their position and flourish right away.
Listing achievements on a resume is primarily done for this reason.
Always consider which of your accomplishments are relevant to the type of employment being sought after reviewing the responsibilities and obligations listed in the job description. You should highlight that in your CV.
Additionally, if you completed them recently, hiring managers will consider your accomplishments and job history to be more relevant and noteworthy. Therefore, you should list more accomplishments from your two or three most recent roles on your CV.
For instance, you would want to include eight to ten bullet points for your most recent role. Just six or seven people could play the next role. After that, you might want to include even fewer candidates for senior roles.
Sample List of Accomplishments: 35+ Resume Accomplishment Examples
35 samples of strong accomplishment statements for resumes are provided here. To come up with your own list of accomplishments, use the ones below as inspiration.
Resume Achievement Examples for Students and New Grads:
- Guided class project to show financial projections for international markets.
- 2019 Dean’s List
- Presented a lecture on osmosis and diffusion as part of the Biology 301 course, receiving a perfect score.
- Active participant in the university debate club
- Soccer team, varsity, 2018–2019
As you can see, you may combine different academic honors, involvement in clubs and sports, presentations and projects, and your grades! When listing accomplishments on a student’s resume, any of these are acceptable.
Since your academic work counts as your experience if you haven’t had any full-time employment yet, it’s crucial to include information besides just your university’s name and the degree you received! You’ll distinguish yourself from other students and entry-level prospects if you provide more detail.
Sample Resume Accomplishments for Administrative Assistants:
- Administrative support for a 12-person digital marketing team that generates $1.9 million in annual revenue and 180 new company leads monthly on average.
- In 2020, the administrative assistant will manage $109 million in customer accounts for a group of 10 Account Managers.
- Due to consistently above-average performance, I was promoted to Senior Administrative Assistant in 2020 and recognized as a “rising star,” an honor granted to just 2% of new hires.
- Spearheading a restructure of the record-keeping procedure that resulted in a 20% time reduction for the administrative staff in Q4 2020
- 11 managers’ and supervisors’ meetings and travel arrangements were meticulously planned and managed.
- During a time of firm growth, I trained two administrative assistants to ensure accuracy and attention to detail.
- New organizational and document filing procedures were put in place, saving $9,200 annually on outsourced labor expenditures.
Keep in mind that you can change the way each resume bullet starts. Despite the fact that many of your bullets should start with verbs like “Spearheaded,” you can also begin some of them with a job title, such as “Administrative Assistant.” The first two instances in the bulleted list above demonstrate this.
The reader will find your resume more engaging if the wording is varied, and incorporating your job title in a few bullets is a terrific approach to add some powerful keywords to your resume that will help you get past any automated application systems the business may be using.
Sample Professional Accomplishments for Customer Service:
- Obtained a 98.2% rating for customer satisfaction in 2020, ranking third among customer care teams with at least 100 employees.
- Achieved an additional $188,000 in income in 2019 by addressing 200 incoming customer inquiries on average each week while educating the client about upsells and other ways our business may assist them.
- Reduced company-wide the typical customer wait time for service inquiries by 3% by developing email response templates for the department.
- In collaboration with the department head, managed the hiring, training, and onboarding of all 12 new customer service representatives in 2020.
- In order to support the enterprise division’s 244% year-over-year increase in 2020, I managed 50+ daily inbound enterprise client requests over the phone and via email.
You can blend together accomplishments that emphasize your day-to-day work with any projects you managed, process improvement initiatives you carried out to save the department time or money, etc., as you can see from the examples above.
You might also include any leadership abilities that were put to use, such as coaching new team members or taking part in hiring interviews.
All of these professional accomplishments demonstrate to prospective employers that you were regarded favorably by your previous employer and can bring significant talents to your new employment.
Sample Resume Accomplishments/Achievements for Sales & Marketing:
- Achieved 212 percent of personal sales quota in 2020, increasing division revenue by 4%.
- A cross-selling marketing strategy was created to bundle three of the best-selling goods, increasing department income by 12% in 2020.
- A planned new social media marketing effort increased online lead generation by 309% in Q1 2020.
- Among a team of more than 50 sales representatives, reached the third-highest sales total in 2019.
- My team and I successfully launched a new subscription service, which resulted in an increase in revenue of 9%.
I won’t list too many professional successes here because I believe that the easiest occupations to list on a resume are sales positions. Just keep in mind to constantly read the job description and highlight abilities that are pertinent to the positions you are currently applying for. Additionally, consider how your tasks and obligations can be measured at all times.
Professional Accomplishment Examples for Human Resources Resume:
- 22 new team members were trained and onboarded in Q4 2020, ensuring that they understood the company’s policies, objectives, and mission.
- Managed 12 contract recruiters and hired 19 new team members successfully in 2020 to contribute to the company’s 22% year-over-year growth.
- Through the use of software learning tools, a new onboarding procedure was implemented, which required managers to onboard new employees in 20% less time.
- 2020 promotion from the position of Human Resources Associate to that of Human Resources Supervisor
- Facilitated a smooth transition to a new office in 2019, organizing more than 200 staff members from 6 different departments to minimize downtime and increase productivity.
Work Accomplishment Examples for Software Developers:
- Supervised the creation of a new subscription video platform that brought the business $3.1 million in its first year.
- Code optimization work was done on an online customer dashboard, resulting in the removal of almost 2,000 lines of code and a 19% reduction in server resource utilization.
- The company’s new mobile apps (for iOS and Android) were successfully launched in 2020 with an average rating of 4.6 stars after being managed and supervised by a 9-person development team.
- Led the quality assurance effort for the company’s new Android app, identifying and fixing 104 bugs and mistakes in the first three months of the app’s release, which led to a 22 percent rise in the average user rating in the subsequent three months.
- Interviewed 22 potential new software engineering candidates for our company, ensuring adequate knowledge of software development and computer science, as well as cultural fit
Work Accomplishments for Manager/Director Resume:
- Supervised a 12-person marketing team that generated 22% of the company’s overall revenue and increased that team’s size by 108% in 2020.
- Supervised 22 employees and oversaw 25+ projects every quarter with a total project budget of more than $2.5 million.
- Developed a new hiring and recruitment strategy that helped the department fill typical job postings 29% more quickly than the previous year.
- Supervised and directed the work of 29 employees (11 direct reports and 18 indirect reports) at 2 office locations and 2 business divisions, including hiring, performance evaluations, and day-to-day direction and control.
- 2019 financial savings of $29,000 were achieved through a revised customer service procedure that saw a 9 percent decrease in refund requests.
Why Employers Care About Accomplishments on a Resume
After looking at the resume accomplishment examples above, let’s discuss why it’s crucial to highlight this on your resume (and in a job interview).
Because they demonstrate your past achievements and abilities and give the company a clear picture of what you could do for them, resume accomplishments are quite effective.
The easiest way to show that you’ll perform well in the future is to provide a few examples of past triumphs.
Imagine what this person could do for us now if an employer sees that you helped your previous firm grow a crucial metric or prosper and develop, for instance.
It’s always more convincing and memorable to provide specific proof of what you’ve achieved rather than only listing duties and responsibilities on a resume.
Here’s an example of a good professional accomplishment on a resume and what it does for you…
Consider drafting your CV and attempting to explain how you contributed to the creation of a new product.
If you’re like most people, you might list these things in a bullet format:
- Assisted in the development of a new product suite launched in 2020
Now imagine you list this work accomplishment on your resume like this instead:
- In the first ten months following its introduction, a key developer for the company’s new product line in 2020 earned $12 million.
In the second example above, you’re demonstrating the precise impact your job has on a company’s success rather than just discussing your basic responsibilities. That will set you apart and increase the enthusiasm of recruiters and hiring managers to speak with you.
However, not all achievements will astonish potential employers. So let’s talk about what to list as accomplishments on a resume today.
Next Step: Write Your Own Work Accomplishments
Examining prior job descriptions for the positions you’ve held may be useful as you begin to compile your own list of accomplishments for your job search. Alternately, start writing down the typical work you accomplish each day, week, and month using your memory.
What were the key responsibilities of your position?
Where did you primarily spend your time? What were you in charge of? What most significantly did you contribute to the company’s success or improvement?
The key to impressing a recruiting manager and acing interviews is that last sentence.
A generic list of bullet points on a resume that begins with “Responsible for” is not going to impress a hiring manager.
In order to quantify your work activities and responsibilities as much as possible, always consider how they genuinely benefit the firm.
Types of Accomplishments to Include on a Resume:
Include numbers and facts whenever you can because they help the reader understand your resume and catch their attention. Think about adding the following:
- Dollar amounts
- Increases or declines in percentage
- Number of persons (for instance, the number of administrative assistants you assisted, the number of supervisors you managed or trained, or, if you work in customer service, the daily number of customer requests you processed)
- Periods of time (for example, saying you helped the company acquire 25 new customers in three months or that you completed a specific project in six weeks and ahead of the deadline)
Of course, you can also include non-numerical achievements, such as:
- Industry awards
- Academic achievements (if you’re a recent graduate or student)
To quantify anything, you might need to consult coworkers and colleagues or conduct research, but the more precise figures and outcomes you can list for individual job duties on your CV, the better.
Examples of strong resume power words and verbs are provided in this post to get your creative juices flowing. This illustrates why you should never begin a bullet with “Responsible for…”
List Team and Company Accomplishments Along With Individual Results
To put the significance of your work into context, you can also list group and corporate accomplishments. For instance, if you work as an administrative assistant for a specific team, you can include how much money they made.
You contributed to that effort, even if it was just a small bit!
This will appear frequently in the upcoming resume accomplishment examples. So be sure to carefully read the next section.
The important message is, don’t feel like you can only include certain accomplishments from an individual résumé. List your group’s accomplishments if you were a member of one.
Resume Format: Where to Place Accomplishments on Your Resume
The section under work experience, particularly in your bullet points, is the finest location to list accomplishments on your resume. Work successes should be listed in your resume’s bullets because they stand out visually and attract the reader’s attention. They are typically one of the first things hiring managers and recruiters look at on a resume.
Additionally, you can list a few significant achievements in the resume summary paragraph that appears at the top of the page. But after that, list even more in your employment history’s bullets.
The two most significant areas on your resume to include this information are there.
Additionally, it’s a huge chance lost if you aren’t already using bullets on your resume. Avoid using lengthy paragraphs to discuss your job. Long paragraphs are often skimmed or skipped!
It’s acceptable to start your resume with a one-paragraph description of your most significant achievements and to include a brief introduction paragraph outlining each role (before the bullets). However, most of your career history part should be in bullet style because employers will carefully study that!
Should You Include a Separate “Key Achievements” Resume Section?
If you’ve read everything up to this point, you already know that your professional summary and chronological job experience are the greatest places on your resume to list major accomplishments.
However, if you want to add more information, you can think about including a section devoted to your “Key Achievements.”
This will enable you to add more keywords and keyword variations to your resume. Additionally, it enables you to display everything in one location quickly if you have amassed numerous professional accolades and outstanding outcomes over the course of a lengthy career.
The 35+ bullets we looked at above could act as significant achievement examples for you to use here as well if you choose to include this part.
The list should be kept brief, though (eight to ten bullets or less), which is precisely what I advise for the talents section.
As a recruiter, I prefer to see examples of your job experience on your CV so I can understand how and when you employed each talent. Therefore, when producing your CV, you should focus the most of your time and work there.
Anything you list in the “Key Achievements” section needs to be included in the “Work Experience” section as well.
Read this post on everything to put on a resume for additional guidance on structuring your resume and choosing which sections to include and where.
Use LinkedIn to See More Examples of Accomplishment Statements
The achievements of various occupations and sectors will differ greatly.
Looking at the best talent in your sector on LinkedIn is another approach to constructing a list of accomplishments that stands out and sets you apart from the majority of contenders.
On LinkedIn, most users place their accomplishments directly under their positions.
As a result, you can find many more instances there and view some of your industry’s top accomplishments.
This might make you think of your own professional successes and will undoubtedly provide you with more instances to draw inspiration from.
You might also observe how other recent graduates are listing their academic honors and other pertinent achievements if you’re an entry-level job seeker.
An indicator that someone is attracting potential employers is if many other people are listing their academic accomplishments in a particular way and have successful careers today.
Conclusion
Listing outcomes and accomplishments on your resume will increase your chances of landing an interview, particularly if those results are pertinent to the employer’s requirements.
Consider your CV as more than just a summary of your previous duties. Share your successes instead, and wherever you can, quantify them.
You can include a range of accomplishments on your resume, such as project management, coaching a new team member, increasing sales, developing a new procedure, or winning a prize.
To distinguish yourself from other job searchers, find as many accomplishments as you can on your resume.
This strategy will help you get more job interviews when you use it with your resume.
