Imagine reading a book by someone who had climbed Mount Everest, then getting to the end of the book and realising there was nothing in it about the actual climb up Everest. Instead, the book turned out to be lists of the explorer's key strengths, places they'd been in the past, their education history and their contact details. Disappointing read? Now you know how employers feel when they receive a resume without achievements listed.

Why list your achievements?

Whilst it's important to list responsibilities you've had, as well as previous position descriptions and skills, none of it means very much without examples of how you've actually used them. The idea behind listing achievements is to demonstrate, through examples, what kind of person you are and what skills you possess.

How to list achievements...

As well as noting your previous job titles and responsibilities, you'll need to explain how you actually applied those responsibilities and the value add to the organisation. To illustrate this supposing your last role was as a filing clerk and your major task was to file reports sent to you by people from various departments. In this role you developed an effective system to file those reports, thus streamlining the whole filing system. This may be common sense to you, but to the reader it demonstrates initiative, efficiency and competence.

Determining achievements...

Accomplishments don't even need to have been carried out at work to be worthy of listing. Depending on the format of your resume, you might choose to have a separate section for achievements. In this case, remember it can be anything you feel did well, you enjoyed doing or you felt proud of. When putting together your initial list of achievements include things you may have done outside of work. Perhaps you renovated a house, or brokered a deal between two parties, or maybe you've kept a longstanding blog related to a hobby. As long as it demonstrates skills and abilities useful to prospective employers you're on the right track.

Your achievements may end up on your resume in their own section or within a list of job descriptions. Or you may need them in an interview when asked to give an example of a particular skill. This is particularly common in 'behavioural interviews' where you're asked to give an example of a problematic or challenging situation you were faced with, and to explain what you did to overcome or solve that dilemma.

The PAR method and achievements...

Regardless of where or how your achievements end up being listed, they key is to create 'short stories' out of them, and the good news is these stories can be constructed using the tried-and-true P.A.R. method - Problem-Action-Result.

To illustrate this oft-used method in a simple example let's refer back to the filing job above. Originally this role may have been described as: "Worked in an office, filing reports from a number of different departments". But using the P.A.R. method we could end up with...

• (PROBLEM) Several departments used disparate report filing formats.
• (ACTION) Created a universal filing system that worked for all departments.
• (RESULT) Increased report filing efficiency across entire organisation.

To summarise you could say, "Cooperated with several departments using contradictory report logging methods, so created one standardised system for all, maximising both departmental and overall efficiency."

As is the case with putting your resume together and practising for interviews, help from friends is an invaluable source of objective advice. Ask friends to listen to your 'achievement stories' and identify the skills they hear demonstrated. Ideally, these should match those required in your target job.

Whether written into your resume or retold at interview, your achievements should impress upon an employer the type of person you are and the way you react to challenges. Not only do achievements help you feel good about yourself but employers will recognise the pride and enthusiasm in your stories. And these are qualities very much in demand in organisations today.