The best résumés are data-based, says a top Amazon recruiter

Include
this phrase in your resume to get one step closer to scoring your
dream job.

Strelka/Flickr

• Your
  résumé is a recruiter’s first impression of you during the
  job search.
• Celeste Joy Diaz, a recruiting manager at Amazon,
  said she’s impressed when applicants ground their
  accomplishments in data. 
• “We know that our candidates have done a lot of things,
  but we really want to know, ‘what does that mean,'” Diaz told
  Business Insider.

---

 

Hiring managers look to your résumé to
find out all about your previous jobs and
experiences. Celeste Joy Diaz, a
recruiting manager at Amazon.Courtesy
of Celeste Joy Diaz

But Celeste Joy Diaz, a recruiting manager at Amazon, said
there’s a right way to talk about yourself — and quite a few
ways to mess it up.

For starters, you can’t just
name drop the company or your job title. That doesn’t give
any perspective on what you did every day. 

Providing a rundown of your entire job description also doesn’t
quite work.

“We know that our candidates have
done a lot of things, but we really want to know, ‘what does that
mean,'” Diaz told Business Insider.

Career experts like executive résumé writer and
career strategist Adrienne Tom agree. You can’t just
state your job title, company, or your daily tasks and expect
recruiters to be impressed by you — or even understand what it is
that you do.

“A job title alone is not enough to clarify personal value,
complexity of skill set, or breadth of expertise,” Tom previously

told Business Insider. “What matters most in a résumé will be
the results that each individual has generated within their
roles, regardless of title or rank.”

Delete the laundry list of your daily tasks from your
résumé — and use this phrase instead

“Titles are great, but we want to understand what was the project
you owned, what was the scope of a project, and what did you
accomplish,” Diaz sad.

And to truly win over Amazon recruiters like Diaz, specify
with numbers the value you brought to your company. Diaz
told Business Insider that this is a winning phrase:

I created a solve for X amount of customers and it saved
X amount of money, using X skill.

This is a great phrase to include in your résumé because it
communicates the financial benefit you bring to a company. And
bringing in more money is exactly why someone would want to hire
you.

Not every role has a clear financial output (unlike positions in,
say, sales), but any professional can put their successes into
numbers.

I’m a journalist who doesn’t know how much revenue I drive, but I
would still be able to implement this. In a résumé, I
write something like: “I wrote X number of articles a week,
attracting X amount of unique views each month.”

You could also write how you exceeded your goals, how many
projects you started or led, the size of your team or client
base, or how many new clients you garnered. 

“No position is exempt from measuring results,” Tina
Nicolai, executive career coach and founder of Résumé Writers’ Ink ,
previously
told Business Insider. “And metrics help employers determine
if a person is capable of leading a team, managing clients, or
growing the business.”