A GOOD RESUME – PROVING YOUR VALUE

What should a resume do for you?  When you boil it down, your resume has only one purpose – to get you an interview.  To do that, it needs to show your next employer that you have had relevant business experience, the kind of experience they will value.  Take a minute and put yourself in the employer’s shoes.  What business problems do they need to solve?  Prove to them that you can produce just those kind of results.  Tangible results.  Increased sales. Lowered costs.  Improved quality.  Reduced cycle time.  Managed high-impact teams.  Your resume should show that you are the kind of problem solver that that any progressive employer would love to have working for them.

So, how do we do that?  How can we show off your accomplishments to best effect?  One effective technique is SAR, Situation, Action, and Result.  Let’s look at a quick example.  Say you are a general manager of Sales, and you’ve been brought in to turn around a region with poor performance.  Let’s put the SAR together.

Situation – Lagging sales performance in Eastern region for national manufacturer.
Action – Revamped sales team, improved sales enablement training, and strengthened sales process.
Result- Increased sales revenue 35% in region and cut administrative costs 40%.

Pulling it together, here’s your SAR resume bullet point.

• Achieved dramatic 35% revenue turnaround for struggling manufacturing firm.  Fortune 500 manufacturer had lagging sales performance in eastern region.  Revamped sales team, improved training enablement process, and strengthened post-sales support.  Drove 35% sales increase, while reducing administrative costs 40%.

Focus your resume on your accomplishments, using the SAR format, and you’re sure to catch the eye of employers.

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