Translating Achievements into Skills

Once you have written down a list of your achievements, you'll need to identify the skill you used to get that result. By highlighting your achievements, you show a potential employer how your skills can be applied to their business - the better your skills, the more valuable you are in the job market.

To help you identify the skills associated with each of your achievements, you will need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What was the achievement?
   Example answer: Hired and trained a new sales team that increased sales by $425,000 over the first year.
2. What problem were you solving?
   Example answer: The original team was not meeting its sales targets and the business was losing money.
3. What skills and talents did you apply personally?
   Example answer: Selecting a successful team; developing people by establishing a training program; identifying and solving problems; motivating the team.

Don't forget to include skills or talents that you use outside your professional career - for instance, you might be excellent at public speaking, writing or fundraising. Skills can also be identified from hobbies and part-time work, projects and courses.

Graduates can showcase the skills they have learnt during their academic study, such as:

"Successfully completed course work and four case study problems on refinancing a $30 million company".

Or

"Completed four years of French at degree level and am fully bilingual. Worked for a year in a school in Paris teaching 11-18 year olds".

Take a look at the following action words to see some examples of the skills that you may have used in each of your achievements. For example, if you have listed communicating as one of your action words, then this shows that you have skills in relationships with people and in handling information.