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Welcome to Issue #207 of Jobseeking is Hard!

Happy Wednesday!

A lot of people have results on their resume, but that doesn't necessarily tell the recruiter whether those results were actually “good.” Did you just do your job, or were you successful at it? And can the recruiter tell the difference?

That's what I want to talk about this week.

This week we’re talking about:

• How to show recruiters that your results were actually successful

• The best (worst?) job posting of the week

• The meme of the week

And for Premium subscribers I’m:

• Debunking some of the LinkedIn job search advice that sounds productive but probably isn’t the best use of your time

• Answering a Premium subscriber’s question about how to show success when their accomplishments don’t have obvious metrics. I’ll explain what else you can use to prove your work was successful when there isn’t an obvious number.

Let’s get to it!

PROVE IT WAS SUCCESSFUL

One of the laziest pieces of resume advice on LinkedIn is some recruiter telling people to “put metrics on your resume.”

Okay. Which metrics? And what are they supposed to prove?

I ask clients for numbers all the time when I’m working on resumes. Revenue growth, cost savings, retention, hiring volume, project size, team size, turnaround time, whatever helps give the reader some sense of scope or impact. Metrics can absolutely make a resume stronger. But the number itself usually isn’t the thing that makes the accomplishment impressive.

The problem is that the recruiter reading your resume probably has no idea what a good number looks like for your role. If you tell me you increased revenue by 12%, maybe that was fantastic. Maybe the target was 5% and you blew it away. Maybe the rest of the business was flat. Or maybe every other person doing your job increased revenue by 25%, and your 12% was actually below expectations. I don’t know. You gave me the outcome, but you didn’t give me enough information to understand whether the outcome represented success.

The same thing happens with all kinds of numbers people put on resumes. You managed a $10 million portfolio. Is that large for your role? You hired 75 people last year. Was the goal 50 or 100? You reduced processing time by 20%. Did that solve a problem the company had been trying to fix for years, or was 20% basically what leadership expected when they bought a new system?

Recruiters don’t have the internal knowledge base you have. They haven’t done your job. They don’t know what your company considers good performance. They don’t know the targets your manager gave you, what your peers were producing, how difficult the client was, or why leadership cared about the project in the first place.

That’s why I think “add metrics” is such incomplete advice. A metric can help explain what happened. What I really want to understand is whether what happened was good. The recruiter is trying to figure out whether you were successful at the work, not just whether you did it.

This is a big part of what I do when I'm rewriting a client's resume. Someone will tell me they grew an account by 15%, and I’ll ask whether that was above target. They’ll tell me they finished a project early, and I’ll ask what that meant for the business. They’ll tell me they retained a client, and I’ll find out the client had been at serious risk of leaving and represented a huge amount of revenue.

Sometimes the accomplishment is already on their resume, but it doesn't sound particularly impressive because the information that makes it impressive is missing. Other times, we're talking through their experience and I uncover something they hadn't even considered including.

That's why I spend so much time asking questions before I start writing. I'm trying to figure out which parts of someone's experience will actually convince a recruiter that they were successful at the work and are worth interviewing for the next job. The writing comes after that.

And this doesn’t have to be about numbers. A client asking to work with you again is evidence. Leadership rolling your process out to other teams is evidence. Getting promoted because of the work you were doing is evidence. Being given a larger territory, bigger team, more important client, or more responsibility tells me something. Winning an internal award can matter if I understand what you did to earn it. Even something as simple as a project being adopted after other attempts failed can help the reader understand that the work was successful.

That’s what I want people looking for when they’re writing resumes or answering interview questions. Don’t just ask, “What was the result?” Ask, “How do I know the result was good?”

You don’t need to turn every bullet or interview answer into a math problem. And please don’t start inventing numbers because someone told you every resume bullet needs a metric. “Collaborated with 14 stakeholders” is technically measurable. I’m just not convinced anyone cares. What matters is giving the person evaluating you enough context to understand what success looked like and where your performance landed against it.

So don’t stop at the outcome. Show them why the outcome was successful.

If your resume has plenty of outcomes but you're not getting interviews for jobs you're qualified for, there's a good chance recruiters aren't seeing the value you think you're showing them. That's exactly the kind of problem I work on through my Premium Resume Rewrite services. I go through your experience, identify the accomplishments that make the strongest case for the jobs you're targeting, and build the resume around them.

Success sells…but only if the person evaluating you can tell that you were successful.

Have a topic you want me to cover in an upcoming issue? Reply or email [email protected] and tell me what you want to know!

BEST (WORST?) JOB POST

OF THE WEEK

Here’s the job post that got the most people talking on my Instagram this week!

“no one wants to work”

If you come across an irritating job posting, email it to the newsletter or DM me on Instagram and I’ll add it to the list to post!

MEME OF THE WEEK

This meme got more reactions on my Threads than anything else I posted this week.

PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER QUESTION

“My resume has a lot of accomplishments, but most of them don’t have obvious metrics. How do I show I was successful without forcing numbers into everything?”

Scroll down to the Premium Section below for my answer!

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Jobseekers, have a great rest of your week, and good luck with those applications!

-Adam

PS!! If you're enjoying the newsletter, let people know! Forward it, post it on social, tag me, whatever...the bigger the discussion, the better! The idea is to help as many people as possible!

About Adam- Recognized as a leading voice on hiring and workplace trends, Adam has been recruiting and providing career advice since 2003, developing high-trust relationships based on honesty with companies and jobseekers. A highly sought-after speaker, he has appeared in numerous outlets, including Bloomberg News, Business Insider, LinkedIn, and CNNMoney. You can find out more about Adam's resume and coaching services here.

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