Because so much is riding on your resume writing such as your career, future, and income, you need all the power you can get into your statements. Often one statement on a resume cannot sufficiently depict or cover your skill, experience, or knowledge. A project, task, or accomplishment is often too complex for one sentence to justify your involvement and contribution.
The ‘Resume Skills Tier Method’ for resume writing is a solution of skill building with multiple statements that support a primary statement. This can greatly enhance the descriptions of your achievements and create a resume that is more illustrative, interesting, and readable.
Using this method you create related statements presenting your skills and accomplishments in primary, secondary, and even tertiary statements and skills. The secondary and tertiary statements support, relate to, or are a result of the primary event or action.
You can use a bullet point format with this presentation that can cause an employer to pause and read your resume instead of hurriedly scanning. This can give you an advantage for generating employer interest and getting an interview.
Here’s how this works:
1. Take one of your resume skill statements or write one just as you normally would. (Select a skill and create an accomplishment statement showing a time you used that skill to do good for your employer preferably with measurable results such as time or money saved.)
2. Now choose a second and possibly third skill that you used at the same time that relates to or is a result of the primary event or action in your first statement.
The following example leads to statements that show a secondary and tertiary skill stemming from the original accomplishment statement:
Example:
Primary Skill: Analytical Skills
Primary Skill Statement: Analyzed 24 months of accounting data and determined in what areas the company could be reducing expenses.
Secondary Skill: Creative Skills
Secondary Skill Statement: Wrote new policy and procedures for purchasing for our department that decreased bid review times by over 35 per cent saving an estimated $341,000 in costs during the next year.
Tertiary Skill: Communication Skills
Tertiary Skill Statement: Conducted training sessions on my methods for satellite offices around the world.
How this would look on a resume:
Analyzed 24 months of accounting data and determined in what areas the company could be reducing expenses.
- Wrote new policy and procedures for purchasing for our department that decreased bid review times by over 35 per cent saving an estimated $341,000 in costs during the next year.
- Conducted training sessions on my methods for satellite offices around the world.