Lisa

My mom recently asked me to review her resume, and so did some of her friends (one of the joys of being a recruiter). These are all very accomplished healthcare executives, but their resumes lacked the pow that I find in resumes of candidates I usually choose to move forward with. It wasn’t because they weren’t stellar professionals, but because they didn’t present their skills in the most advantageous way.

For most of us, when we sit down to work on our resumes, we think to ourselves, “What do I do in this position?” While this is relevant information, you can share it in a way that has that extra “umph” recruiters want to see. When you’re looking for what to put on your resume, instead of thinking about what your job entails, think of what you’ve accomplished. I’m not saying leave out the day-to-day tasks of your job, but what speaks louder is what you accomplished.

In other words, you want to call out what you “Made, Saved and Achieved” (MSA):

• Made the company (money, sales, etc.)
• Saved the company (money, time, etc.)
• Achieved personally (awards, recognition, etc.)

Here are some examples:

What you did What you did with pow
Developed a test automation framework Developed a test automation framework reducing 
company/team testing time from 3 days to 12 hours
Managed and optimized online advertising campaigns Optimized a poorly performing ad campaign resulting in a decrease of cost per action by 50 percent

Streamlined development
process

 Enabled our development team to ship our product one month early by streamlining our development process

MSA also plays well in interviews. In this competitive market, employers want people who are able to produce results. Don’t be shy – wow ‘em with some pow!

-Ryan

P.S. - Shout out to Sue Danbom, a national trainer at Volt for teaching me all about MSA!

Work at Microsoft!