Achievements on an IT Based CV

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Hi,

I have been told to add an 'Achievements / Projects' (Acomplishments) seperate to my career history section my CV by an recruitment person.

What achievements can i put on an IT Based CV?

Can anyone give any examples?

Your help would be very greatly recieved.

Thanks.

 

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I have a couple of "key business achievements" on my cv. These include changes I have made to applications to make them faster/more efficient. Where possible, you want to be qualitative - i.e. provide a measurable effect of the achievement.

For instance:

isnt enough. So you rewrote it to make it faster. Did you succeed? What is the measure of that success. 1 second is faster, but who gives a toss about 1 second. [quote="Fergal1982's CV]• Identified a performance issue with a sizeable Excel export routine. Through analysis of the routine, and application of OO techniques, managed to effect a 93% reduction to the process time.[/quote] Is much more qualitative.

What you can put, is largely dependant on what you can take from your experience. It doesnt need to be "above and beyond" the call of duty. Just somewhere that you have produced an excellent result that had a positive impact. It also depends on the role I suppose. A Networking role is going to be less concerned about my coding achievements.

 

Moved my entire infrastructure up to 11

 

*Cough* Of course, when I say qualitative, I mean Quantitative.

 

Was about to point that out hehe.

I actually just have my achievements listed in my employment section, so anything I did during my time at X employer that I feel is necessary to mention is just listed in that particular employment history section, rather than a section all to its self.

 

Me too westernkings, I can't help but think certain comments are driven by lazy recruiters, ones that can't be arsed to read two pages, they basically want all standout features on one half a page at top of CV. Maybe this will work for you if you do it, who knows.

Trouble is some people then complain CV is too short, can't please everyone...

I agree make it Quantitative but again stats can be misleading, I once changed a >25+ minute process into a <5 minute process, the original implementation was naive at best. Should I quote a 400%+ improvement or say reduced running time by 80% ? Do percentage improvement figures make sense when factors or orders of magnitude are involved ?

In either case all it really highlights was that there were once some **** coders or least average coders under pressure at the company before me. Also without the naive implementation there would have been nothing to optimize.

So in essence its all just marketing and sales pitch again, which is kinda what recruiter is pointing out CV is for nowadays.

 

Hmm, what about skills from different disciplines? So, say I can programme in various languages, I also know how to work with web development languages and I'm also 'tech savvy' - so I know how to troubleshoot etc etc...do I put down all my skills and knowledge? The job I would be applying for would be an entry level 1st line support role..

 

But thats exactly what a CV is. Its marketing for you, and a sales pitch for you as a product.

A lot of people (both here and elsewhere) advise that managers will narrow down their CV pile based on only the front page of the CV. So it makes sense to ensure that that page is intriguing enough for them to take a second look.

On mine, I have my contact details, personal profile, key skills, and key achievements. That tells them who I am, and what I can do. If they are interested, they can go to the next page to read my employment history/qualifications/etc.

 

Mine is the same, bar the key achievements on the first page. I list my achievements on a per employer basis, first basis lists my skills, the second page lists the backup for them skills. If they like what they see on the first page, they will then go to the second page and see what my day to day responsibilities were in a short paragraph, followed by notable achievements and a brief overview of my time there.

Basically, people need enough to grab the attention on the first page, and have enough detail on the second page, to justify and back up what's on the first page but I really think achievements should be listed in employment history just to show that you have constantly produced positive change at every employer. Something I feel a list on the first page may not get across because you can't really say you're a performer if you have only offered benefit to one employer out of six for example. So having it in employment history shows exactly where your achievements were.

I would hazard a guess at saying that most regulars on CF have almost identical CV formats.

 

From what I've seen on the forum, I'm guessing that mine is a bit different. For example, I have only one or two sentences per employer.

 

So do i
well, maybe some bullets
but then again the first 8 employers are now just line items, not descriptions

EDIT: I guess that could be down to length of service and the short form American resume style though, my CV was 5 pages longer than my resume