Great Manager Resumes Provide More Numbers

Leadership and business acumen are skills that are easier shown than told, so how can your manager resume create confidence in potential employers? One way to show your accomplishments on paper is to add details, data, and numbers to your resume. Because recruiters review thousands of great resumes, formatting data for easy scanning is also essential.

Entrepreneurship and work expert Elizabeth Isele says that your manager resume should tell a story, and that story should be compelling to hiring managers and recruiters. Data and numbers form a foundation for your management story—they provide the details regarding your accomplishments and how many people you've supervised. Isele says facts and numbers aren't enough to lift your management experience off the page. She recommends coupling statistics and numbers with concise and vivid descriptions. Don't just tell a potential employer that you reduced attrition by 3 percent in your last position; tell the employer how you accomplished the reduction and provide business-centric data on why the reduction was a good thing.

A great resume includes concrete data for most of its biggest claims. Anyone can create a manager resume that makes claims such as increased employee morale, drove productivity, or decreased departmental errors. When possible, find a way to use numbers, fractions, and percentages to demonstrate your accomplishments, but keep your narrative on an understandable level. Unless you're applying for a job in quality or process management, where hiring managers are looking for someone with a statistical background, then rounding to the nearest whole number and speaking in general business terms about data is acceptable. Strong data statements on manager resumes might include the following:

• Improved employee satisfaction as evidenced by a 15 percent year-over-year improvement on survey numbers
• Increased department productivity by 10 percent within the first quarter through restructured employee training
• Worked with team members to increase customer satisfaction as evidenced by a 15 percent reduction in returns, a 50 percent decrease in average speed of answer, and a 24 percent increase in positive customer ratings.

Beyond writer Jeffrey T. McCormack cautions job seekers to avoid relying solely on a manager resume to land a job. Hiring managers and recruiters may spend hours sorting through online resume postings, but they'll likely only scan each document for a few seconds. Applicant tracking systems used by many companies mean a person doesn't see most of the resumes in the system; the ATS simply scans the resume for keywords and routes those that seem appropriate to the recruiter. The fast pace of online resume review means that you should ensure your resume contains appropriate management keywords in strong, easy-to-read context; you also need to get out and make your own connections. Keep a well-written, data-heavy resume on hand, but don't let an updated resume fool you into thinking you don't need to shake hands, join professional networks, and talk to those in your circle about your job hunt.

A strong manager resume tells an employer why you're right for the job. Include applicable experience, education, and skills, and back up your claims with data and numbers to complete your story.

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