Why You Should Add Powerful Key Accomplishments in Your CV

CVJury Editorial Team
Modified On April 5, 2024
Reading Time: 9 minutes

SUMMARY: Your key achievements examples demonstrate that you are goal-oriented and have something extra to bring into the organization.

If your CV is to help you secure an interview, you should treat it as a marketing tool.

Every section should sell your strengths, skills, and abilities strongly.

For example, your accomplishments section must prove to your employer that you’re an achiever who can help the company reach the next level.

List the most critical and industry-specific achievements to help you stand out among other job hunters.

Including accomplishments in a CV is the key to attracting the reader to consider you as an achiever and desiring to meet you during the interview.

While most candidates only highlight duties and responsibilities, you can outshine them by including your key achievements in various positions.

Employers will want to hire a candidate with substantiated evidence of outstanding accomplishments.

It’s a significant way to show off all the fantastic things you’ve done.

Adding key achievements examples will show how good you were at your job.

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While accomplishments in a CV are significant to sell your skills, abilities, and talents, not every achievement will do the work.

The secret to impressing hiring managers is listing relevant accomplishments depending on the industry and position you’re applying for.

For example, you can include critical achievements examples in the summary and education skills segments.

You can also add it in the professional or work experience section.

If you have other important achievements examples worth mentioning, you can create a separate accomplishments section to list them.

To ensure your achievements stand out, write them clearly and concisely.

Also, use strong action verbs and industry-specific keywords.

So, when writing or updating your resume, you should include some key achievements examples to market your expertise.

But most people find it challenging to describe their key achievements examples in their CVs. If you’re one of them, we’ve got you covered.

In this blog post, we’ll show you how to identify your key achievements examples, where to include them in your CV, and why it’s essential.

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Why Include Key Achievements Examples in CV

Your CV is your marketing tool that determines whether you secure an interview.

So, updating your work experience section and including the necessary skills is vitally germane.

But you need more than that to help you stand out among other job seekers.

What hiring managers want is evidence that you’re worth the task. And this is where accomplishments come in.

Before we get to how to list critical achievements in a CV and the various examples in a resume, let’s find out why having them is so important.

Your accomplishment statements should be able to market your expertise.

Accomplishments act as clear evidence that you succeeded elsewhere.

You can secure an interview if you can support your achievements with complex data.

For example, you can demonstrate specific instances you accomplished various goals or particular examples of achievements you acquired in your role.

Your hiring manager will visualise your outstanding work with specific instances and examples of various accomplishments.

In addition, accomplishments can help you demonstrate that you are results-oriented.

As a result, your employer will infer that you can make outstanding achievements and invite you for an interview.

How to Identify Your Key Achievements Examples

What accomplishments do you include in a resume to help you stand out?

Depending on the role you’ll be pursuing, your achievements must be tailored to illustrate your value in the company.

In the same way, you can tailor your accomplishments depending on the goals you want to achieve in your new position.

If you’re wondering whether your accomplishments are relevant, ask yourself the following questions.

Does this achievement relate to the job I’m applying for?
Will I be excitedly talking about the achievement when called for an interview?
Is the outcome of this achievement compelling?
Is this achievement quantifiable?
Is the skill leveraged for this accomplishment transferable to my target position?

If you like, you can also reflect on your past achievements in your prior roles.

While this may seem daunting, it offers many past accomplishments.

The idea here is to analyze various jobs and list everything you accomplished, big or small.

This long list will help you select relevant accomplishments that impress your hiring manager.

Then, with the key achievements in a CV, you’ll highlight how your actions and skills positively impacted your previous organizations.

How to List Accomplishments on Your CV

Most job applicants get confused about how to list accomplishments in their resumes.

But it doesn’t have to be a nightmare for you.

The good thing is there’re no hard and fast rules on where to include your accomplishments.

Whether you want to create a separate section for your achievements or spread them across different sections, the choice is yours.

Some common areas to spread your accomplishments include the summary, professional experience, or skills sections.

You can include the most outstanding and relevant accomplishments in the summary section.

This is the section that your hiring manager will see first.

You can use the summary section to demonstrate how your valuable skills, experiences, and accomplishments make you the perfect candidate.

How do you use the professional experience section to include critical achievements examples in your resume?

The experience section of your CV is vital when applying for a job.

It shows your hiring managers that you have relevant skills and qualifications for the job.

What about including accomplishments in the positions you gained your professional experiences?

For instance, you may consider whether you hit your goals, learned something new, saved the organization time and money, or made the work more efficient.

What if you have relevant and outstanding accomplishments outside the workplace?

This is where you create an accomplishments section in your CV. Such achievements can’t fit in your summary or work experience section and are crucial that they’ll help you secure an interview.

With an accomplishments section, you can showcase all your achievements.

Accomplishments to Put in a CV

If you’re wondering what kind of accomplishments to include in a CV, we’ve got you covered.

You can break them into various categories depending on their levels of importance. These categories are:

General Accomplishments

General accomplishments are those awards and achievements you received in your previous positions and may or may not be related to the post you’re applying for.

They showcase your passion and dedication to your job. You can include general accomplishments in the work experience section to prove that your skills and experiences can help the organization achieve more.

Industry-Specific Accomplishments

Suppose you’re applying for a job in a specific industry. In that case, you can include relevant accomplishments to help you stand out from other job seekers.

Look for accomplishments that showcase how you helped solve industry-specific problems or achieve industry-specific goals.

You can list these achievements in the accomplishments section.

Academic accomplishments

You can include any academic achievement in the education or the accomplishments section.

Academic accomplishments include education awards and publications.

These accomplishments will vary depending on the position or the CV format you’re using.

Examples of Accomplishments to Include in a CV

People use hundreds of accomplishment examples when writing their CVs or resumes.

We’ll break down various accomplishments by common industries to help you choose the best easily.

You can also use them to brainstorm a list of relevant achievements to include in different sections of your resume.

Continue Reading: Key achievements examples

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Finance

Devised a unique investment strategy that helped the company earn over £50,000 in two months.
Implemented finance coverage plans that helped minimize the company’s financial risks.
Trained 20 individuals who started working in the finance department after two months.
Mediated to resolve a financial conflict between two departments.
Administered budgets successfully between 2019 and 2021.
Guided senior managers in reducing the overall expenditure by 20%, thus saving the company over £50,000 annually.
Used MS Access to analyze clients’ accounts and identified weaker performing areas, improving the accounts and average revenue by 10%.
Voted as the accountant of the month in September 2021.
Analysed delinquent accounts to determine common payment problems that helped reduce bad debt by 15%.

Business

Closed an average of 10 sales daily in outbound telemarketing.
Acquire 50 new clients in 2020 and exceeded the organization’s sales goals by 10%.
Maintained a 70% customer retention rate above the company’s average.
Managed a quality assurance program that saved the company over £150,000 annually.
Exceeded the company’s monthly KPIs by 20%.
Achieved the highest customer satisfaction rate of 99.2% in 2021.
Managed 20 contract recruiters, hired ten new team members, and increased the company’s growth by 25%.
Devised a unique hiring and recruiting plan and helped the company improve the hiring process.
Implemented a new customer service program that helped reduce the refund by 8%, thus saving the company over £20,000 in 2019.

Education

Supervised 3 PhD dissertations, 10 BA theses, and 5 MA theses.
Published over 50 articles in various journals.
Raised SAT scores by 45% on average in 2017.
Received an award in 2019 as the teacher of the year after demonstrating a strong teacher/learner relationship.
Improved standardized test scores by 30% in the sciences after implementing creative coursework.
Completed a three-month internship with Adobe and was commended by the supervisor for being attentive to detail.
Assistant editor of the University Blog from 2018 to 2021
Appeared three times on the Dean’s List from 2017 to 2020.

Engineering

Increased the company’s workflow by 15% in 2019.
Designed and developed mechanical equipment and tools that helped the company achieve an 18% increase in efficiency.
Upgraded the company’s old system to a new one on C++, increasing efficiency by 72%.
Completed four projects in 2018 that were worth £4 million.
Redesigned XYZ’s machine arrangement, helped improve efficiency, and increased production rate by 40%.
Discovered two design flows in an ongoing project that could have caused a catastrophic failure.
Eliminated unnecessary servers and consolidated databases that helped reduce costs by £1500 monthly.
Implemented AJAX, jQuery, Handlebars.js, and ReactJS to develop and design front-end for 50+ websites.
Orchestrated the repair of XYZ’s machinery, reducing the equipment expenses by £30,000.

Healthcare

Implemented a program that reduced incorrect medicine administration by 82%.
Mentored incoming LPN/PCA staff, nursing staff, and interns.
Received an average of 92% positive reviews in various post-visit patient surveys.
Reduced dental procedure preparation setup time by 50%.

Tips for Writing Down Achievements on Your Resume

Deciding which accomplishments to include in your CV is one thing, while knowing how to incorporate them to be competitive is another.

You can list your key achievements examples that stand out but fail to secure an interview.

So, if you’d like to know how to include achievements in a CV and land that interview, here are the following tips.

Make a List of Relevant Accomplishments

It’s time for you to reflect on your past positions and brainstorm any achievements in education, life, and employment.

Do you have any memorable instances in life where your performances made you proud?

Are there any positive remarks you received from your teachers, employers, or colleagues?

Did you help a company solve problems or surpass its targets?

If you find it hard to remember such accomplishments, you can seek help from your teachers, colleagues, or employers.

They might remember several positive contributions you made that are worth including in your CV.

The idea here is to write as many achievements as you can remember.

Next, go through that list and select all important and relevant accomplishments for the position you’re applying for.

You don’t want to fill up valuable spaces of your resume with irrelevant or unimportant information.

Also, include the most recent accomplishments as they prove that your skills are still relevant.

Use Strong action verbs

Strong action verbs pack a punch in any form of writing.

They grab the reader’s attention since they emphasize the action taken.

Start sentences with strong action verbs when listing your accomplishments on your CV.

The first thing you want is to grab the attention of your hiring manager even before he gets to know more about you.

With strong action verbs, your CV will appear more dynamic.

The hiring manager will instantly know that you’re an action-oriented person.

There are several strong action verbs to introduce your accomplishments in a resume.

Some include implemented, increased, mentored, eliminated, completed, upgraded, assisted, published, supervised, devised, guided, trained, administered, conducted, managed, and others.

Use Numbers to Quantify Results

Using numbers is an effective way to demonstrate the results of various accomplishments.

The good thing about using numbers is that they’re good at showing instead of telling.

In most cases, recruiting managers will prefer working with numbers.

They want to know the exact figure in terms of numbers or percentages of what you achieved.

Assuming that you helped the company surpass its target, increased sales, trained recruits, supervised interns, improved performance and efficiency, or improved exam results, you can use the exact figures to quantify your achievements.

Include Awards Won in Various Positions

Awards are things to be proud of and worth including in your resume.

But where should you put the awards you won in your CV?

You can put them in the accomplishments or “Awards” section.

Use the reverse-chronological order to list the relevant industry awards when listing them.

Next, specify your awards in terms of national, international, or internal company awards.

Finally, write the award’s name and the year you received it.

What Do Employers Look for in Accomplishments When Hiring?

Employers will prefer candidates who can bring value to their companies.

Therefore, the first critical step to securing an interview and your dream job is writing a CV with everything employers prefer.

In the accomplishment section, hiring managers will look for relevant achievements to determine your worthiness in the job post.

They can infer that you’ll bring similar skills to the company and make more accomplishments with relevant accomplishments.

Accomplishments will say more about you.

For example, if you helped other businesses increase sales, solve problems, upgrade their working conditions, or increase customer retention rate, the employer will know that you’re a valuable asset.

In addition, how you write your accomplishments matters a lot.

The first thing you want is to capture the attention of your employer.

Using industry-specific keywords and introducing your achievements with strong verbs will significantly increase your chances of securing an interview.

With industry-specific keywords, the employer will know you’re familiar with the company and know your position well.

Also, using strong action verbs will show that you are an action-oriented candidate who’ll help the company conduct its daily operations.