10/13/2014

My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume | Laszlo Bock | LinkedIn

Laszlo Bock

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SVP, People Operations at Google

My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume

September 29, 2014

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There's a ton of unfairness in the job search process. As a candidate, you cant control
whether a company requires a work visa, whether some executives kid has an inside track
on your dream job, or whether your interviewer has some private or unconscious bias that
will hurt your chances. Ill write about some of these -- especially unconscious bias -- in the
future.
For now, I want to focus on the most controllable element of a job search: your resume.
The sole purpose of a resume is to get you past that first screen and into an interview. In
my last post, The Biggest Mistakes I See on Resumes, and How to Correct Them, I
covered the all-too-common mistakes that knock applicants out of consideration at many
companies. Lets assume youve read that post and scrubbed your resume so its concise,
error-free, legible, and honest. Youre already better off than at least half the applicants out
there.
But how do you make your accomplishments stand out? Theres a simple formula. Every
one of your accomplishments should be presented as:
Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]
In other words, start with an active verb, numerically measure what you accomplished,
provide a baseline for comparison, and detail what you did to achieve your goal. Consider
the following two descriptions of the same work, and ask yourself which would look better
on a resume:
1. Studied financial performance of companies and made investment
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My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume | Laszlo Bock | LinkedIn

recommendations
2. Improved portfolio performance by 12% ($1.2M) over one year by refining cost of
capital calculations for information-poor markets and re-weighting portfolio based on
resulting valuations
The addition of the 12% improvement makes the statement more powerful. Adding
($1.2M) anticipates the reviewers question about whether 12% is a big deal or not. If you
improved investment results by 12%, but that meant going from $100 to $112, thats not
too impressive. But adding $1.2M to the starting portfolio value of $10 million is huge.
Explaining how you did it adds credibility and gives insight into your strengths.
Several examples inspired by actual resumes will show you what I mean. The first bullet is
typical: not bad, but certain not to stand out. The second is a much better version of a
similar accomplishment from a different resume. My own suggestions are in italics.
College student who is a leader in her sorority
Managed sorority budget
Managed $31,000 Spring 2014 budget and invested idle funds in appropriate highyielding capital notes
Managed $31,000 Spring 2014 budget and invested $10,000 in idle funds in
appropriate high-yielding capital notes returning 5% over the year
College student participating in a leadership program
Member of Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT)
Selected as one of 230 for this 18-month professional development program for
high-achieving diverse talent
Selected as one of 230 participants nationwide for this 18-month professional
development program for high-achieving diverse talent based on leadership
potential, ability to contribute to this MLT cohort, and academic success
Finance or consulting professional
Responsible for negotiating service contracts with XYZ
Negotiated 30% ($500k) reduction in costs with XYZ to perform post-delivery
support
Negotiated 30% ($500k) reduction in costs with XYZ to perform post-delivery
support by designing and using results from an online auction of multiple vendors
Sales support associate
Achieved annual business plan commitments for volumes, model mix, wholesale
revenue, selling expenses and brand
As a team member, contributed to 21% increase in advertiser spend by achieving
158% of target number of customer contacts (80 contacts per week) and 192% of
target interaction depth (20 minutes per customer)
Candidate with skill-based resume
Skills: Excellent customer service skills. Friendly and positive attitude
Skills: Excellent customer service skills and positive attitude as demonstrated by
receiving employee of the month in four consecutive months in 2014
Logistics expert
Reduce cost of goods sold strategy: Five years of line and supply chain
management experience at XYZ distribution centers and managing outsourced
third-party logistics providers
Achieved 30% logistics cost savings by reducing returns, use of overtime, excess
and obsolete inventory and targeted outsourcing
Achieved 30% logistics cost savings ($900k) over five years by reducing returns
(-8%), use of overtime (-7%), and excess and obsolete inventory (-5%), and through
targeted outsourcing (-10%)
Marketing manager
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Studied the branding and marketing strategies of XYZ. Analyzed the pricing
strategies of XYZ in comparison to competitors
Led cross-functional 10-member team to develop and implement global advertising
strategy for $X million XYZ brand
Led cross-functional 10-member team to develop and implement global advertising
strategy for $X million XYZ brand resulting in 25-point increase in brand recall, 12%
improvement in net promoter score, and contributing to 18% year-over-year sales
improvement ($XM)
Veteran transitioning to the civilian sector
Worked as a trainer with deploying units to ready their medical personnel for combat
action and trauma medicine
One of three officers selected to lead comprehensive redesign of the XYZ training
program for X,000 Marines and sailors, increasing measured unit proficiency by
20% [This one is great -- I wouldnt change a thing!]
You might feel like its hard to measure your work, but there is almost always something
you can point to that differentiates you from others. Back when I was a waiting tables at the
Olive Garden, I would have written, Exhibited the spirit of Hospitaliano by achieving 120%
of dessert sales targets (compared to an average of 98%) and averaging 26% in tips per
night.
Well, maybe I wouldnt have mentioned the Hospitaliano....
And even if your accomplishments dont seem that impressive to you, recruiters will
nevertheless love the specificity. Served 85 customers per day with 100% accuracy
sounds good, even if the customers are people you rang up at a grocery store. Its even
more impressive if you can add, compared to an average of 70 customers at 90%
accuracy for my peers. Providing data helps. Making it meaningful with a comparison
helps even more.
Niebuhr said to change the things you can control. I agree. You cant control the biases
and attention span of whomever reviews your resume. You do control whats on the page
in front of him or her. Use the formula accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z]
and recruiters will take notice.
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My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume | Laszlo Bock | LinkedIn

Eugeny Brychkov, Ph.D.

Creator of GR8BIT and provider of The Real Engineering Experience
Laszlo, there're two issues here:
-- non-disclosure and confidential information. Do you think people are allowed to post their company
financial performance data in their resumes?
-- these types of statements will exaggerate information to the extent of lie. For your example about $1.2M
writer should really know how much performance was improved, and have approval to publish this
information. It's not a secret that many companies are having problems with reporting so that you can not get
required granularity of the information to show YOUR result.
--- Quantitative results are usually achieved by the team, even if we are talking about sale account manager.
As bigger results are, as bigger team was involved.
I treat your advice to make resume reading for HR people as automated process as possible. Just parse
bullet points, detect keywords, and make an automated decision.
HR people _have to_ make an effort to hire great people. Great people are usually humble. They will, with
very high probability, not attribute success of the whole team to just themselves.
Like(56)

Reply(5)

13 days ago

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Robert Moy
Architecture Student at the University of Illinois
While this is valuable advice, please be aware that it is difficult to squeeze long descriptions of
accomplishments, experience and skills fit onto a single page for our resumes. For a college
student like myself, this wouldn't be a problem, but for more experienced individuals, it would be
nearly impossible to do that.
Like(17)

Reply(4)

14 days ago

robert carsia
Principal at RCI Partners LLC (international management consulting)
Ah, in today's world resumes and HR are generally and specifically worthless. Gatekeepers
must 'go away'. It's who ya know.
Like(18)

Reply(1)

13 days ago

Tim Hetzel
Systems Engineer at Milwaukee Electric Tool
How would this apply to IT?
Accomplished 100GB of data storage savings as measured by the operating system by deleting
all of the users' files.
Like(24)

Reply(5)

12 days ago

Luca Bertozzi
Business Intelligence Manager at Abtran
I don't know if I have to laugh or weep. The concept that all accomplishments should be
measurable in numbers is so ridiculous that really makes me laugh; on the other hand, this
shows once again that HR people too often stick to pre-cooked models, which makes me
wanna cry.
Like(19)

Reply(3)

12 days ago

Irina Ghazazyan | MA, CHRP Candidate

Business Development & Recruiting Lead at RAPID Staffing Solutions | Pharmaceutical
& Biotechnology
I certainly agree that this resume format is better than a resume where mere job duties are
listed. Nonetheless, I don't think there is a 'winning formula' for a resume.Such resume format
will work for managerial roles, or independent consultants, but not for specialist roles, or
administrative roles, etc. Also taking into consideration nowadays team-based work structure
we as recruiters/hiring managers should always have second thought as to the fact how much
of others' work might a person have ascribed to himself on 'accomplishment-based' type of
resume
Like(8)

Reply(3)

13 days ago

Jacek Monikowski
Mr. Bock. I would like to see your application you once sent Google :)
Like(16)

Reply(1)

12 days ago

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My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume | Laszlo Bock | LinkedIn

Marilyn Emanuel
Talent Acquisition Strategist & Career Coach
As a staffing recruiter who sees many resumes per week, 98% of those received don't have a performancebased resume, but are written as a dull job description which is unacceptable in today's competitive hiring
environment. This article is a very clear, concise, instructional, thought-provoking article and much needed!
Like(9)

Reply(2)

13 days ago

Ketcia Thach
Numbers are nice to have. But can you evaluate Passion ? Love for you industry? The energy
you are willing to put in your job because you know you can do it ? your creativity ? Numbers
say what you achieved , it does not tell how you approached the issues. And sometimes it is
better to know how you did something rather than knowing what you achieved.
Like(12)

Reply(3)

12 days ago

Sam Shawki
Chief Executive Officer at MagicCube, Inc.
A great read. What I cannot understand though is why a person of my experience would get an
almost yearly call from a Google recruiter where an important question is my college GPA and a
reminder that not getting an MBA will disqualify me from moving forward with Google :)
Like(11)

Reply(3)

13 days ago

Douglas De Avila, PMP

Change Management Lead, Asset Data Lifecycle Program
There is so much hype about resume writting. There is no substitute to relationships, active
networking, face to face meeting and informational interviews. It is not what you know but who
you know.
Like(13)

Reply

12 days ago

Laura Lingle
More learning. Less waste. (tm) Jaqueline of Many Trades (tm)
I'm confused. That's two "articles" in a row about resumes, containing nothing new or
enlightening. Shouldn't an "INfluencer" have some obligation to provide something novel?
Like(11)

Reply

13 days ago

Marion Martinelli, MHROD

OD Practitioner, Organization Effectiveness
Boring.....There are much more important things to focus on than how someone writes their
resume...unless you are hiring a resume writer. We do not expect HR to value what we bring to
the table anyway. Perhaps Laszio's time would be better spent improving recruitment
practices...rather than giving resume advice.
Like(7)

Reply(1)

13 days ago

Hope Bryant
Freelance Artist and Designer
Here's the rub, what if you don't know your numbers, or the exact numbers? What if there isn't a
way to get them? Or what of you just do not know what you contribution totals were for a given
job?
Like(8)

Reply(2)

12 days ago

Joseph Paschke
Interactive Art Director, Project Manager, Pixel Tamer and Typographer
120% of dessert sales targets? You counted every desert served? The restaurant owners
shared with you the amount you needed to serve to hit/exceed the target? I find some of this
very hard to believe.
A lot of resumes that are written this way make me question from where the figures were
generated. Many of the figures might not be available to the person who has the job.
And given the fact that many people put false accomplishments on their resume in order to pad
it, my reaction would be skepticism.
Like(10)

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12 days ago

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My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume | Laszlo Bock | LinkedIn

Dmitry Shpak
Director, Operations at Cognella
I very much like the referenced article, but as regards to numbers, they just get overused so
much on resumes. Increased sales by 24.5% ... how can you prove or anyone can check if
that's even close to what happened? Facts - yes; numbers pulled from thin air ... not so
impressive.
Like(9)

Reply

13 days ago

Daren Howard
Sr. Specialist, Network Support at AT&T
Of course, the only issue I have with creating this type of resume is that you don't get many key
words or phrases in the resume. The issue with this is that many companies utilize these to
narrow down the resume's to decide which ones a human actually looks at. If you use all
accomplishments you may not have enough key words but if you use descriptions you may not
have a resume that reads well enough to show accomplishments. My biggest issue is finding a
good common ground that will accomplish both without writing a book that the HR department
will simply throw away... That seems to really be where the challenge is...
Like(6)

Reply(3)

13 days ago

Kim Murray
I read a lot of these sorts of posts whereby one is to be mathematical when creating a CV. I
accomplished THIS by doing THAT and adding THOSE. But what does one do when their
particular employement is not measurable? I work in a creative field. One in which you cannot
say this product is better than that product - it is quite like music. You may like one song, I may
hate it. No one is right. No one is wrong. So while sales people, or accountants, or
programmers may create a winning CV with your post, the rest of us cannot.
Like(8)

Reply(2)

12 days ago

Dan Koren
TopLinked 4444 Software Defined Director of Software Engineering
There seems to be an implicit assumption behind this article that all
hiring managers read resumes in the same way as the author, or as
the Google HR machine (or should). In fact, many do not. I find the
"state and quantify every detail" approach advocated by Laszlo to
be a complete turn-off. What I look for in a well written resume is
the ability to articulate the essential, rather than the eagerness to
enumerate all the detail. One can learn a lot more about candidates
by drilling down from the high level to the detail in a live interview,
than by reading cut and dried numbers from a sheet of paper. I am
far more interested in finding out how people connect, interpret and
articulate the events that shaped their career, than by numbers whose
meaning can only be understood in contexts one is not familiar with.
Like(8)

Reply(2)

8 days ago

Mark Parrish
Healthcare, Project Management, and Technology professional
What good are numbers if they are not able to be checked? How will an resume reviewer know
that something wasn't 3% when I state that it was 300%. No HR department or manager will
validate this. Instead of concentrating on what you have done with fancy figures, focus on what
you bring to the table.
Like(8)

Reply

13 days ago

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