the #1 question your resume should answer

the #1 question your resume should answer the #1 question your resume should answer The vast majority of resumes I see read like a series of job descriptions, listing duties and responsibilities at each position the job applicant has held. But resumes that stand out do something very different. For each position, they answer the question: What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldnt have? So sure, its great that you were hired for a job with, you know, a job description. But what I want to know is what you did with that job. Did you just go through the motions and turn in an acceptable, but not particularly star-quality, performance? Or did you do an unusually good job, one that impressed your boss and coworkers and made them devastated to lose you? The typical advice about resumes suggests showing what you accomplished by using numbers increased sales by 40 percent, instituted cost efficiencies that reduced overhead by 20 percent, or whatever. But what if you have a job where what made you great isnt numerically quantifiable? You can still achieve the same result by asking yourself the key question I posed earlier: What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldnt have? Maybe you introduced a new initiative that led to increased visibility for the company or higher retention. Maybe you did the work of two people after someone left and wasnt replaced. Maybe you were the only person in your departments history to meet all deadlines for three years in a row. People really struggle over this part of writing a resume. Yet at the same time, most people have a reasonably high opinion of their own work. So, assuming you think youre good and that a hiring manager should be glad to have youask yourself: what makes that so? What made you great at each job, and how did you do better than someone else would have? If you cant answer that yourself, and youre the one who was right there doing the work every day, how do you expect a hiring manager who doesnt know you to figure it out? I originally published this post at U.S. News World Report.