Create Your List of Successes – Step #2 of a Perfect Job Search

In this article, I explain Step #2 "Create a list of relevant achievements" of the 7-Step Method "Fast Lane to the Perfect Job" I have developed to maximize the success of my coaching clients. If you haven't read my previous article here on LinkedIn in which I give an overview of the whole approach, I recommend reading that first.

Only relevant achievements count

As I explained in several of my earlier articles here, the mere mentioning of previous tasks and responsibilities in your CV / résumé is NOT sufficient to convince the hiring managers of your competencies. Unfortunately, most applicants make this mistake.

For a truly selling representation of your relevant experiences, you must also always convey the respective achievements and thus show the benefit of your work to your former employers. In other words, how you contributed to the success of the companies in particular.

This principle applies to all stages of your application process. It concerns the way you should write your CV / résumé as much as the best way to present yourself in the job interview and the only good way to support your salary expectations by reasonable arguments.

That means you need to be or become aware of all your relevant accomplishments, positive results, successes, or whatever other term you prefer to describe the value you've created for your employers to date.

As many job seekers tend to struggle with that, it is a good idea to sort out this task on its own before you need these important pieces of information time and time again at the later steps.

This is why you should create your List of Successes now.

How to create your List of Successes

Here is how your list should look like before you move on to the next step:

• The list must only contain positive results of your work for previous employers (no tasks, responsibilities, or activities).
• All entries must be relevant to the defined focus of your job search.
• The list should be as long as possible – in other words, ideally complete. You can always decide later if you want to use a particular entry, combine it with others, or leave it out depending on the context.

So, your entries describing your work as a database administrator, for example, shouldn't look like this:

? Wrote SQL queries and generated sales reports.

But like this:

? Created approx. 120 complex SQL statements querying up to 10 major Oracle RDBMS databases simultaneously from March to November 2023.

? Generated 850+ retail sales analysis reports in Microsoft Dynamics 365 in 4 different formats for management accounting purposes during the first half of 2023.

? ...

It may take a little while to remember everything and to get together all the relevant details but once you're done, you'll be amazed to see how much you can bring to the table. ??

What it means for the next steps

With this list at hand, you'll be ready to write a great CV / résumé as the next step and later go for job interviews and enter salary negotiations well prepared.

By the way, once your list has been completed, it is a good idea to periodically go back to it and quickly add the latest accomplishments so that it will stay up to date and you'll never have much work to do on it again.

Continue by learning more about step #3 ...

Would you like me to help you with that in person?

No problem, because that is what I as a professional career coach do all the time. Of course, my work is not for free but the great results you can achieve with it will be well worth the investment. Contact me briefly and I'll let you know how to go ahead together soon.

Send your job search and applications on the road to success

Stay tuned for my further explanations and practical tips on the matter here every week.

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