How Job Seekers Can Translate Professional Wins into Powerful Case Studies Hiring Managers Love

04 May How Job Seekers Can Translate Professional Wins into Powerful Case Studies Hiring Managers Love

No matter how crowded the job market is, there are always strategies to stand out. Listing your skills on your resume to cut through the filters and get in front of recruiting teams is crucial. But that’s just the starting point, and it helps when you take it a step forward. Because when it comes to employers, the Past is prologue mindset is a powerful psychology to show how your previous achievements can lead to their next big wins.

Listing relevant skills is vital but showing how you’ve leveraged those skills to save business resources, generate revenue, level up productivity, or modernize processes can help you become a more memorable and hirable job candidate. Attaching numbers and percentages to these accomplishments helps them resonate more with potential employers.

This blog covers how you can use these case studies on and off your resume to empower your job search:

First, take an inventory of your breakout career achievements.

Think of times you made a measurable outcome for a company or backed exceeding performance objectives. To spot areas to highlight, scan letters of recommendation for what past colleagues or managers have said about how you contributed. Look through your emails (keeping a Kudos folder makes this easy) to see where colleagues and higher-ups have congratulated you on a job well done. See what you did, how you did it, and the measurable outcome (if any).

Take the CAR approach—a great plan of attack for interviews also.

In case you haven’t heard of CAR, the acronym stands for Challenge, Action, and Results. When you look at how you made an impact in responding to a business challenge, you want to make sure you highlight the following:

• How you generated revenue
• How you saved money/time/resources
• When you helped others in your organization
• How you increased productivity

Thinking of your past standout achievements in these terms will help you translate them into meaningful wins that hiring managers can see carrying over into the role you’re interviewing for currently.

Understand how to break these CAR achievements into different mediums and dialogues.

It’s essential to ensure you’re leading your experience sections on your resume with not just your skills and responsibilities but how you made an impact. For example, suppose you are including how you headed up a digital transformation initiative. In that case, you’ll want to include how you saved time, internal resources, and increased productivity—adding number values to these whenever possible.

Practicing the CAR method and breaking out several examples can help you through job applications, cover letters, resumes, and interviews. You can also break them into a separate PowerPoint or file to attach with your resume to turn heads and climb higher on the candidates-to-interview list.

A recruiter can help you define your achievements.

We are experts in helping you market your skills and achievements to hiring managers. Staffing Strong represents an extensive roster of employers with new full-time and contract-to-hire roles. Let’s connect. Submit your resume today.

Meet the Author

Evelyn Vega is the Founder and President at Staffing Strong and the Past President of the Phoenix American Marketing Association. Since 1999, she’s made her career about supporting her clients in building meaningful careers and partnering with businesses in finding quality hires. In her free time, Evelyn sits on various advisory boards and enjoys practicing on her drum set!