Determining how to communicate your value in a resume and prove that you are an employer's bottom-line solution can often cause anxiety.
While it's critical to focus on measurable achievements, your resume should also look beyond numbers and relate soft skills that you've applied to projects and interactions. These soft skills directly tie into your emotional fitness, and ultimately, demonstrate your cultural fit with your target employer.
Proving emotional fitness means you show your resilience and strength in areas that often directly impact business, including:
1. Shifting unwavering opinions
2. Uniting disparate groups
3. Pacifying unhappy clients
4. Conveying enthusiasm; motivating others
5. Navigating treacherous business seas
The following are examples of what you'd write on a resume to knit threads of emotional nuance and personal culture with a bottom line, to convince an employer you're the best fit for the job.
Example 1: Demonstrating an ability to shift unwavering opinions:
"Opened door to new market vertical, leading to more than $20M in new business. Won over adamantly uninterested hospital department head in first meeting after quickly 'getting a read' on corporate and personal challenges."
Note: The second sentence focuses on soft skills in "getting a read" on the department head's challenge, and this ability ultimately supported the $20M result.
Example 2: Showing aptitude in bringing together disparate groups:
"Invoked vision, leadership and change agent skills to coalesce 15 disparate regionally focused purchasing teams into global procurement entity managing $15M+ of annual spend."
Note: Describing soft skills in vision, leadership, and change agency better demonstrates the candidate's capabilities.
Example 3: Illustrating skill for satisfying unhappy clients:
"Slashed customer cancellations 35%: Weighted down with a 70% membership cancellation rate within first week, orchestrated sales training and ongoing development, with 1-week training curriculum and scripting; developed employee mentoring program; and designed on-boarding from hire date through to first 90 days of employment."
Note: Soft skills were implied by describing a practical, pragmatic, and multi-pronged response to being "weighted down" with a hefty member cancellation rate (versus this candidate simply folding under the pressure).
Example 4: Painting a picture of enthusiasm and imaginative expression that builds confidence in others:
"Conveyed an enthusiasm for teaching that fosters student interest and motivation, compelling children's results beyond self-imposed limitations. An artist since youth, I offer a lifetime of imaginative expression that permeates creative problem solving."
Note: Knitting in descriptive words like "enthusiasm, foster, motivation, imaginative expression" underscores this candidate's obvious soft skills.
Example 5: Demonstrating an ability to navigate stress:
"Unleashed $75M in savings while directing company right sizing and cost reduction initiative, following capital market collapse and subsequent global recession (2009, 2010, 2011), paired with changing industry dynamics including healthcare arena uncertainty.
Made and enforced difficult decisions regarding rightsizing and terminations, including engaging in multiple, intense conversations with key staff members regarding the necessity to take action for the betterment of the organization."Note: The bullet showcases this candidate's emotional fitness to not only make, but enforce tough decisions during a difficult period of company reorganization; describing intense conversations further reinforces this candidate's emotional strength in being willing to deal squarely with tough, and necessary, interactions.
By weaving emotional fitness threads into the fabric of your resume, you will ensure employers receive a three-dimensional view of your character and how it influences your performance results. This melding of personality and culture fit with skill and performance will further ensure that you and the company you're courting are on the same page.
Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter is a Glassdoor career and workplace expert, chief career writer and partner with CareerTrend, and is one of only 28 Master Resume Writers (MRW) globally. Jacqui and her husband, "Sailor Rob," host a lively careers-focused blog at http://careertrend.net/blog. Jacqui is a power Twitter user (@ValueIntoWords), listed on several “Best People to Follow” lists for job seekers.
