Retail Resumes: Skills vs. Achievements

Anyone in a hiring position has undoubtedly seen hundreds of resumes with a section called Core Competencies or something similar. After all, many resume experts believe it's a very important section to include. How important? Well, it's often placed at or near the top of the first page - prime real estate on a resume - so it must be pretty important, right?

Not in my experience.

The problem with simply including a list of your skills is no one has any reason to believe you. After all, it's YOUR resume - what else are you going to say? It's not a place to list your weaknesses.

You could say that you're an expert in recruiting, training, sales, customer service, payroll control, and loss prevention, but that doesn't mean the reader will believe it. That's why it's important to back up those statements with "proof."

How do you do that? You highlight your accomplishments. 

Here's an example. Say you want to highlight the fact that you're skilled in recruiting, training, and customer service. Many people list those in a skills section like this: 

CORE COMPETENCIES 
Recruiting - Training - Customer Service

Some people also expand on those skills with statements such as these:

• I have extensive experience in recruiting and hiring and always ensure my stores are fully staffed.
• I am an accomplished trainer with significant experience in leadership development.
• I provide an exceptional customer experience at all times.

It's a decent effort, but statements like these do very little to convince the reader that you have the skills you say you do. Recruiters have typically skimmed through thousands of resumes in their careers, and they see statements like the ones above on virtually every one of them. So why would YOU stand out?

Instead of simply listing your skills or stating what you think you're good at, focus on the impact you've had on previous companies. After all, that's the result of your skills, isn't it?

Here's an example to show your recruiting skills:

• Recruited 4 new store managers from direct competitors.  Hired 6 high-potential assistant store managers and 10 department managers for the district.  Selected to join the college recruitment team.

Here's an example to show your training skills:

• Appointed district trainer - on-boarded and trained 3 new store managers and 5 assistant store managers.  Partnered with the corporate HR team on the creation of a new leadership development program.

Here's an example to show your customer service skills:

• Increased customer satisfaction scores by 21 percentage points - improved from 54% to 75%.  Served as the district customer experience captain - shared best practices with 11 other locations.

Detailed accomplishments such as these will show the reader that you are, in fact, skilled in recruiting, training, and customer service.  Instead of asking them to just take your word for it, you're providing concrete examples that will help build trust and improve your chances of getting called for an interview.

Hope this helps!