INGREDIENTS TO A MENU-TRANSFORMING RESUME
Everyone who ever has held a job has had an opportunity to provide a key ingredient to an item on the company’s menu of products or services. Even at the most basic level, your contribution impacted the zest of a project’s results – its quality, its efficiency (did a single task impact the project being completed on time and under budget?), a friendly smile and prompt response to a customer … all influential ingredients to the plated product offered on the company menu.
By landing new clients, shaving costs, cutting time to delivery, improving customer satisfaction, building a more reliable product, enhancing quality, negotiating more for less with a vendor … the list goes on … your contribution is a measured ingredient into the entrée which your company serves up.
At a larger level, you provided value to a featured entrée — landing and retaining longstanding clients contributing thousands if not millions to revenue and profits measured to the company’s bottom line or contributing to strategic initiatives that impacted corporate marketing, branding, communications, product development, competitive market intelligence … and so forth.
Moreover, we all have stories that are deep fried and deliver an unusual appeal, perhaps more immediate impact and/or larger result than some of your day-to-day efforts. The internal or external customer’s palate is consumed with the sizzle and rich flavor, if you will, caused by your and your team’s energy, commitment to detail and inventive oils and ingredients you tactically added to the overall strategic recipe.
Your resume messaging should be branded with these measured contributions to the company menu, both subtle and overriding. Weave into your resume even the smallest impact to the monumental, deep-fried story that may have been menu transforming – all such stories are instrumental in driving home the resume, compelling the reader to call!
[…] you want to hook the reader, don’t bore them right out of the gate. Grab their attention with sizzle. So, instead of the profile summary just saying that you are a skilled financial manager with 15 […]