Contrary to what most people would think, your resume is not about you. It is not about who you are, but about how your skills, knowledge and experiences can help your potential employer. With that being the case, it has to be able to show and demonstrate how you have been an effective employer to your previous employers. In that sense, the ‘experience’ section of your resume is the part to which you need to focus since it is the best indicator to convince your potential employer that your performance in the past had been great.
One of the ways that you can improve your resume would be to leverage PAR (Problem, Action and Results) statements in your resume’s ‘experience’ section. PAR statements in your ‘experience’ section simply means that you have to write about what you have accomplished in your previous job and not simply what you have done before. For example, instead of just writing, “Developed Programming Systems.” It should be, “Developed Programming Systems that helped the data storage and recovery easier and convenient.” There is complete distinction between the two and you have to make sure your resume is optimized like that.
Here are ways you can effectively leverage PAR (Problem, Action, Results) statements in your resume. First of all, here is how the PAR statements should be formatted:
PROBLEM ” Here is where you describe the situation or problem.
ACTION ” Explain the things which you did in order to deal with the problem at hand.
RESULTS ” Explain or describe the results or the payoff of what you did.
The important thing here is not the PAR statements themselves, rather it is how clear and powerful your writing is. On that note, it is best that each sentence is headed by action words. Additionally, when using PAR statements it is best that you use metrics. The best example of metrics is to use a qualitative words but saying that it in positive statement is better already compared to not using metrics.
The thing with using PAR statements is that they should be used to spin but must be done honestly. Remember that in resume writing, integrity is most important and saying things in your PAR statements that you cannot possibly discuss in an interview and will compromise you during background check will surely hurt you.
Your PAR statements should also display the abilities and skills you have showed in the action you have taken to deal with the problem. On the other hand, it can be quite hard to make PAR statements especially if you are building a resume out of scratch. To start, think first of the work that you have been most proud of, any special projects you have been part of, awards and recognitions awarded to you or perhaps if you have successfully saved money for the company in the past.
Start with these things and then structure to them following the structure mentioned above. Make sure that you have put all the necessary details in a concise statement and surely you will be able to put your achievements into the right standpoint giving your resume the extra kick it needs.
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