On the ninth day of resumes, NAU Career told me…

ON THE NINTH DAY OF RESUMES,
NAU Career told me:
QUANTIFY YOUR DETAILS,
DEMONSTRATE YOUR SKILLS TRANSFERRING,
HIGHLIGHT UNIQUE EXPERIENCES,
WRITE ACCOMPLISHMENT STATEMENTS,
Use STRONG ACTION VERBS!
MAKE YOUR MARGINS EVEN,
THREE TO FIVE KEY QUALIFICATIONS,
ONE TO TWO FORMATTED PAGES,
AND HAVE A SOLIDLY CRAFTED RESUME!

NAU Career presents…12 Days of Resumes!

Don’t get your tinsel in a tangle this holiday season while trying to build your resume! Turn on the fireplace, grab yourself a cup of hot cocoa, and read through our TWELVE DAYS OF RESUMES jingle to show every employer why you’re the best elf for the job!

We will be releasing a series of blog posts and videos leading up to December 25th with important information, so don’t miss out!

Check us out on all our social media channels (@naucareer) for more information and to see the NAU Career staff offer you the gift of their lovely voices this year to celebrate!

Day 9: Quantify, quantify, quantify!

There’s a HUGE difference in making 4 batches of cookies versus 400.

If you simply state that you made multiple batches of cookies to ensure the happiness of guests at your holiday party, it doesn’t fully represent the amount of time and hard work that went into that experience.

Similar to writing bullet points for your summary of qualifications and details for your accomplishment statements, make sure that you quantify your details when discussing your relevant experience!

How to quantify your experiences

“Quantifying” means adding a number, award, or other hard evidence to prove the claim you’re making.

It not only eases the employers’ eyes by allowing them to look at a number rather than another word, but it also conveys your experience level on a topic as well!

Here are some great examples:

• Four (4) years of experience instructing group exercise classes for up to forty (40) participants
• Collected and analyzed biological data for a five(5)-year international research project
• Developed and implemented three (3) units of curriculum
• Two (2) years’ experience in customer service positions, meeting the needs of diverse customers
• Supervised groups of up to fifteen (15) students, twice each week for two (2) semesters

Quantifications of a different sort

There are other ways besides just adding concrete numbers to quantify your experiences.

LinkedIn, for example, offers some excellent granularity to breakdown your proficiency with languages:

We’ve even seen NAU students and alumni graphically quantify their hard and soft skills on resumes in different ways.

This student was applying for a marketing internship with the Phoenix Art Museum and decided to use a 5-point dot system to represent their skills:

And this alumni decided to make a horizontal bar chart and fill in the proficiency levels with various computer programs and technical skills:

Each industry may be looking for something different, so be sure to take a look at some example resumes on our website to get some creative inspiration for your own.

Remember:

You have a complete inventory of marketable experiences, so brainstorm how you can best represent your skills and experiences with the power of quantification!

For more information about everything career, be sure to visit our website or schedule an appointment via Handshake! Happy holidays!

– NAU Career Development!