A lot of job seekers opt to use a career highlights section on their resumé before going into their experience.  While this is definitely a step above using a generic objective statement, there are better options altogether. 

This article examines what is better than using a career highlights section on your resumé, and what you can do instead to land more interviews for the kind of work you want. 

What are career highlights?

Career highlights are wow statements or accomplishment statements that are relevant to the work you're applying for.  They can illustrate the hard skills (skills that pertain to the job title) or soft skills (transferable skills) that a job requires. 

There's nothing wrong with career highlights - in fact, you should be writing about them.  But you should write about them well.  This article isn't about not using career highlights - it's about writing them well all over the resumé instead of in one section alone. 

Before we examine how to write accomplishment statements, let's examine what an effective resumé does for you. 

How does my resumé connect with the work I'm applying for?

Your resumé is like a preview of what you can do.  It should capture the essence of what you're capable of concerning the work you're applying for.  And what is this essence?  This is like fruit juice - let's say orange juice.  Juice is the essence or extract of the orange.  The orange comes with a skin or rind.  This rind contains the juice inside, just like your jobs contain your experience. 

But the employer doesn't want the rind, they want the juice.  Therefore they don't want the jobs, they want the experience. 

Putting a few career highlights on your resumé and then following it up with generic job descriptions under experience is like giving the employer a few drops of juice from an orange and then following it up with the rind! 

Give them a whole glass of juice - juice of course that is prepared in a way that suits what they are looking for, aka the requirements of the job. 

Then some job seekers go ahead and give the employer the entire fruit basket.  This will give them extra work to determine if you're fit, searching for the oranges and breaking them open, and they might not bother when other candidates might have done a better job with that. 

Many job seekers make the mistake of creating a career piece as a resumé and hoping the employer will see them as a fit.  Clever job seekers learn how to target resumé more for the job and the organization, and they're the ones who land more interviews.

So how do you give them a glass of orange juice sans rind?  Or the glass of orange juice without the entire fruit basket?  

After all, by your fruits, they shall know you[i].

Here's a step-by-step procedure:

1. First you have to select the specific fruits from your basket, the oranges.  This means that you need to distinguish what is most important to the employer.  Examine the grocery list that is the job posting then pick out which skills and experience you have from your fruit basket to match the employer's needs. 
2. Second, you need to peel the oranges.  The flesh is the goodness that comes from the fruit.  And your experience is the goodness that comes from your jobs.  
   
3. Thirdly, you need to slice the orange.  This is where sections of a resumé come in.  But if you just quarter things into sections, the flesh of the orange can look like pulpy chunks and might not be so attractive.  That's where the last step comes in. 
   
4. Finally, you need to blend the orange chunks.  This doesn't mean that you don't use sections on your resumé, but it means that the sections should talk to each other to give a more blended or consistent picture of you. 
   

So you see... career highlights are not just one section of your resumé.  It's most of the resumé, in separate sections. 

Let's examine how to write them now.  

How do I determine my accomplishments?

It's not as complicated as it sounds, but it does require some reflection.  Some people keep a career journal and it helps them remember their accomplishments.   It also helps them remember their strengths.

If you get writer's block trying to pen accomplishment statements down for your resumé, you can use several techniques, like the talk-to-a-kid strategy, or the put-yourself-in-the-manager's-shoes strategy.

This can get the juices flowing, and then you can write statements using keywords from the posting or industry keywords.

 

What sections do I use instead?

You can write career highlights or accomplishment statements all over your resumé.  It's not so much a matter of where you write them, but how you writs them. 

Career highlights or accomplishment statements should be written under the highlights section of your resumé as well as under the experience section.  

You can even write accomplishment statements under the education section. 

North American employers expect to see a tailored resumé because it has relevant information organized into sections.  A tailored resumé usually has a highlights of qualifications section (typical for Canadian resumés) or a profile and skills section (typical for U.S. resumés) before getting into the experience. The highlights of qualifications section or profile and skills section is what I mean by highlights. 

When it comes to writing accomplishment statements on a resumé, writing them under both the highlights and experience works if you're choosing a resumé style that is chronological or hybrid.  But if your resumé style is functional, all of your accomplishment statements will be written under the highlights, since your experience section is simply a list of jobs and their time frames, often called a job chronology.

But could accomplishment statements look different if they are under highlights than if they are under experience?

Of course.  Accomplishment statements may be more general under highlights and more specific under experience.  But that's not a hard rule.  

Accomplishment statements you write under highlights may hint at what you write under experience.  Whatever you do, don't repeat word-for-word the same accomplishment statement under highlights for your experience.  You only have two pages of real estate on your resumé to work with anyways (three pages if you count the cover letter).  

How do I write accomplishment statements in my resumé?

Accomplishment statements don't have to be dramatic.  But they need to be specific to you.  

You can write accomplishment statements by describing your unique contributions, either by quantifying or qualifying them or by giving them scope or depth. 

When writing accomplishment statements, remember, you are extracting the orange juice from the rind.

  

Under the experience section, you can opt to describe each employment entry with accomplishment statements instead of with job descriptions.  

Examples

Here are some examples.  The first one is an edited extract from a job seeker's resumé that was used as an example in the  Language of the Resumé: Past Tense and Present Tense article.  Some text is underlined so you can see where the accomplishment statements in the highlights connect with those under experience.  And then the other examples show accomplishment statements under highlights, then under experience, and one under education, for different job seekers.

Here is the resumé extract. 

Example one: Highlights and experience. Using accomplishment statements in the highlights and experience sections of the resumé.

---------------

Job Posting: Restaurant Assistant Manager at The Cheesecake Factory (Toronto ON)

Candidate: Adriana Collins

Highlights of Qualifications

 - Enthusiastic and ever-learning restaurant managing professional with five plus years of experience in the restaurant industry (over two years in managing restaurants). 

 - Experience working with small business owners to larger franchises.  Unique approach to collaborating with managers and staff yields better service and stronger business.

 - Ability to function in a fast-paced environment; functioned in multiple roles, and managed staff and resources when understaffed. 

 - Skilled at relationship building and improving processes; developing methods to increase staff efficiency, enhance customer experience and improve restaurant reviews. 

Experience

Red Lobster (Scarborough ON), Shift Manager, Aug 2022 to present

 - Scheduling shifts and managing staff for regular openings and booked events. 

 - Hiring, training, and supervising staff (chefs, cooks, and servers).

 - Collaborating with franchise manager and staff; increased the franchise's rating from 4 to 4.5 stars on Yelp within three months by working with coworkers to incorporate customer feedback on service and quality. 

 - Solving problems from managing staff and resources while short-staffed and facilitating rush orders during peak hours. 

Jamaican Jerk (Queens NY), Partner, Jan 2022 to Feb 2022

 - Established a restaurant as one of two partners.  Developed menus and business systems. 

 - Hired and trained staff from servers and cooks to accountants and ancillary staff. 

 - Revamped dine-in to take-out and delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic, by scheduling, outsourcing (Skip the Dishes, Door Dash), revising menus, and advertising. 

 

Sushi House (Atlanta GA), Server, Jan 2020 to Feb 2022

 - Served over 10+ tables a night when short-staffed.

 - Devised a system between kitchen staff and servers called the "clockwork method" that reduced incorrect orders from 10% to 2%. 

 - In under two weeks, completed one-month training on all menus and front functions .

---------------

And here are some more examples. 

Example two: Highlights.  Using accomplishment statements instead of generic statements.

---------------

Instead of:

• Designed backup plans for the power company in my home country. 

Consider:

• Designed a backup plan for the electrical power for half of Uruguay. 

---------------

Example two: Highlights. Using accomplishment statements instead of generic statements.

---------------

Instead of:

• Two years of experience as a content writer. 

Consider:

• Two years of experience as a content writer in multiple industries (healthcare and education) for various content from blog posts to white papers. 

---------------

Example three: Experience.  Using an accomplishment statement instead of a job description.

---------------

Instead of:

• Established procedures for issuing and replacing credit cards. 

Consider:

• Developed and launched national procedures for issuing and replacing credit cards for some of the bank's primary corporate clients. 

---------------

Example four: Experience.  Using an accomplishment statement instead of a job description.

---------------

Instead of:

• Performed marketing research and conducted surveys to develop business plans.

Consider:

• Developed complete business plans for two key clients to launch their startups by conducting and analyzing market research and running surveys.

---------------

Example five: Experience. Using an accomplishment statement instead of a job description.

--------------

Instead of:

• Designed corridor soil reinforcement, and created alternatives to designs that saved the company money. 

Consider:

• Saved the organization 25% ($2.5 million) on a project  by designing an alternative soil reinforcement method using implanted trees to prevent mudslides that cause deaths and closures along a freeway corridor. 

---------------

Example six: Experience. Using an accomplishment statement instead of a job description.

---------------

Instead of:

• Was top five seller in the franchise for selling cars. 

Consider:

• Became the top five seller after six months in the franchise for selling vehicles, with the fewest returns and many client referrals that ended in more sales. 

---------------

Example seven: Experience. Using an accomplishment statement instead of a job description.

---------------

Instead of:

• Tutored student in math and science. 

Consider:

• Tutored students in math and science; encouraged students to understand concepts rather than cramming which increased their confidence in difficult subjects as their grades improved from Cs and Ds to As and Bs.

---------------

Example eight: Education. Using an accomplishment statement.

---------------

Instead of:

• Course in 2D and 3D AutoCAD.

Consider:

• Course in 2D and 3D AutoCAD.  Produced complete construction drawings of a concrete apartment complex.  3D printed a model of the Tahrir Monument (Cairo, Egypt) for a mantle piece.  Photos provided in portfolio. 

---------------

Summary

I've got you for a summary.  Here is a recap on how to write your career highlights all over your resumé and not just in one section. 

1. Career highlights are wow statements or accomplishment statements that are relevant to the work you're applying for.  They can illustrate hard skills (skills that pertain to the job title) or soft skills (transferable skills) a job requires.
2. You can write them under the highlights of qualifications section (typical for Canadian resumés) or the profile and skills section (typical for U.S. resumés) as well as under the experience section. 
   
3. Writing accomplishment statements is like selecting oranges from a fruit basket and extracting a glass of juice from it to give to the employer.  The orange juice, or the skills and experience, matches the employer's needs they express on the job posting.  
4. You can write accomplishment statements by describing your unique contributions, either by quantifying or qualifying it or by giving scope or depth.
5.  Under the experience section, you can opt to describe each employment entry with accomplishment statements instead of with job descriptions.
   
6. Accomplishment statements you write under highlights may hint at what you write under experience.

Notes

This article contains no text pictures to ensure that every word can be read aloud by a text-to-speech application. And was tested using Google Chrome’s “Read Aloud” add-on.

Resources

Check out my other articles for help in building your targeted resumé. And if you're looking for a resumé guide to land that dream job, book me to help. Rates apply.

Bio

Tiffany Persaud is a freelance writer who has written for clients and organizations in Canada and the USA, on topics ranging from books, films and media, to health and employment skills. She has her website (https://tiffany-persaud.writing.io/) where she publishes many pieces just like these each week.

Reference

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.: "Find a Better Job for Self-Reliance".  2016. 

< https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/self-reliance/course-materials/find-a-better-job > Accessed on February 23, 2023.

---