Applying for a job is all about convincing employers that you can help them reach (and hopefully surpass) their goals. The best way to do this is by emphasising achievements on your CV.
Achievements to put on CVs are descriptions of times you produced positive results at work (including volunteer and internship positions), university, or school. Here are the three main types of CV achievements, along with examples of how to list them:
1. Productivity achievements
The first accomplishments that come to mind when you’re writing your CV are probably results-based, such as times you:
- generated money
- completed high volumes of work
- attracted new clients
- enhanced (or maintained) quality
- increased brand recognition
Employers prefer to hire applicants who show they can produce the above results on their CVs, because they’re more likely to help the company achieve its goals. So prioritise such accomplishments when you make your CV.
Here are examples of how to highlight your results-based achievements on your CV:
2. Resource-saving accomplishments
Employers love savings. So any action you’ve taken or problem you’ve solved to save your organisation money, time, or physical resources is a great achievement to highlight on your CV, like so:
3. Management achievements
If the achievements you put on your CV are related to overseeing people and projects, employers will view you as a candidate with management potential. Here are some management-related accomplishments you can list on your CV:
- the number of people or projects you supervised
- examples of interpersonal conflicts you resolved
- times you completed projects ahead of schedule
And these are examples of the accomplishments above in CV work experience section bullets:
Haven’t seen enough examples? We have more job-specific CV achievement examples below.
How to write about achievements on your CV
If you’ve looked at the examples above and still aren’t sure how to present your accomplishments on your CV, don’t lose hope. Follow these four CV writing tips to ensure your career highlights star in your CV:
1. Figure out what you’ve accomplished
Before you write your CV, make a list of all your achievements. Comb through your work history, education, and even your hobbies and interests, writing down anything you’ve accomplished.
Next, cross-reference your list with the requirements listed in the job advert to determine which of your achievements are most likely to get the employer interested in hiring you. These are the accomplishments to highlight on your CV.
Remember to repeat the second step of the process outlined above every time you put together a new job application.
2. Get specific with hard numbers
When you list your achievements on your CV, always include hard numbers so the employer understands the scale of the impact you’ll make for them.
Clear achievement with numbers
- Created content to post across the company’s 3 social media channels (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn), earning 3.6 million impressions and attracting 400K new followers
Unclear achievement without numbers
- Created successful posts for the company’s social media channels
But if you’re having trouble coming up with data for your accomplishments, try to get some from your manager, who should be tracking your performance. Also, start tracking your impact yourself right away so it’ll be easier to make your next CV.
Examples of data you should track include:
- money amounts
- time saved or contributed
- numbers of people and projects managed
- amounts of resources you were responsible for
- numbers of customers served
- projects completed on time
3. Put them all over your CV
Your accomplishments belong in every CV section you can get them into. Achievements fit naturally into your work experience section (all the examples above are from this CV section) but you should also highlight them in your personal statement, education, skills, and hobbies & interests sections:
Hard sell your accomplishments by explaining how you can achieve similar gains working for the employer. A great place to do this is your cover letter. The purpose of a cover letter is to explain in your own words why you’re the best person for the job, so be sure to include one in your application.
Personal statement
Put your most relevant achievements in a 3–5 sentence personal statement (also known as a CV personal profile) to get the employer interested in you as soon as they start reading your CV. Here’s an example that shows you how to do that:
Education section
List educational accomplishments like honours, awards, and scholarships received in your education section. And if you completed a dissertation, you can mention that too.
This is how one applicant put achievements in their CV’s education section:
Skills section
Put a job-related certification or a relevant coding language you’ve learned in a bulleted skills section, like this:
Hobbies & interests
Instead of just stating your leisure time activities in your hobbies & interests section, note how you’ve thrived. This is an example of a hobbies & interests section that squeezes in a few impressive achievements:
4. Move your most relevant accomplishments to the top
Always place your achievements most likely to impress the employer (you’ll learn which achievements those are in the job advert and your company research) to the top of your CV.
So order your CV sections accordingly. For instance, if you have a lot of work-related achievements that show you meet the job requirements, pick the top one or two to note in your personal statement, and then go right into your work experience section.
But if your education or skills section has more job-specific achievements, move those higher in your CV’s format.
Job-specific examples of CV achievements
One way to find out what types of achievements employers in your field want to see on your job application is to look at CV examples from your industry and see what accomplishments your peers highlight. To make things easier for you, we’ve pulled some of the best examples of achievements on CVs for these industries:
- Administration
- Business and marketing
- Creative roles
- Customer service
- Education
- Engineering
- Healthcare
- IT
- Journalism
- Law and politics
- Security and public safety
- Student
Administration
When you apply for an administration or office support role, employers will look for achievements related to your organisational skills on your CV.
Business and marketing
Here are some accomplishment-focused bullets from business and marketing CVs:
Creative roles
Do you work in a creative role? Look at the examples below to get ideas for what achievements to put on your CV:
Customer service
Have you kept a high customer service rating or earned your employer extra revenue by upselling? Put those achievements on your CV, like this:
Education
Writing your teacher CV? Show employers you’re an excellent educator by highlighting CV achievements like these:
Engineering
The following bullets give employers clear pictures of the engineering feats the applicants who wrote them can accomplish:
Healthcare
Unsure what achievements to put on your CV for a healthcare job? Here are some great examples to follow:
IT
When employers open your CV for IT or computer science work, they want to see that you’ve produced results like these:
Journalism
Emphasise your ability to communicate with your target audience if you’re writing a CV for a journalism role.
Law and politics
Look at these achievements from law and politics CVs to get ideas for your own:
Security and public safety
When you apply to a security or law enforcement job, use hard numbers to show employers the scale of your safety achievements:
Student
Emphasising achievements on your student CV can be tricky because you likely have limited or no professional experience. But you can still find noteworthy accomplishments in your coursework and any volunteer or internship work you’ve done.
These student CV achievements are sure to impress employers looking for teachable new hires:
FAQs about key achievements on a CV
To ensure we accomplished our goal of telling you everything you need to know about how to put achievements on your CV, here are answers to three more related questions:
- What do you put on a CV if you have no achievements?
- What are CV achievements for students?
- How do you answer ‘what have been your notable achievements in work?’
1. What do you put on a CV if you have no achievements?
If you dig deeply into your past, you should be able to find achievements, including:
- company or group achievements (even if you didn’t break any records with your work, you contributed to the team’s success)
- personal accomplishments (e.g., you made a meme or video that went viral, showing your creative ability — and even finishing a university degree counts as an achievement)
However, if you truly have no job-relevant achievements, learn how to write a skills-based CV that focuses on your skills rather than your experience.
2. What are CV achievements for students?
CV achievements for students include:
- group projects that earned top marks
- extracurricular activities like raising funds for university societies or being elected to student union leadership
- winning a student competition (e.g., an essay writing contest)
- landing a competitive internship
- building your personal brand through social media
3. How do you answer ‘what have been your notable achievements in work?’
If you’re asked ‘what have been your notable achievements in work?’ during a job interview or on a job application, your answer should include:
- accomplishments related to the job you’re targeting
- data that gives the employer context
- specific examples that expand on the information you put on your CV
Here’s an example of a good answer to common interview questions about your work achievements:
‘My notable achievements in work include setting a sales record while I was working as a waiter at Bart’s Beans & Mash. When the restaurant updated its menu to include breakfast cocktails like bloody marys and tequila sunrises, the waiting staff were incentivised to upsell the new items to diners. I started off slowly, finishing in the middle of the pack in the first two months. But then I took an online sales course and started applying the tips I learned to upselling cocktails. The next month I sold 100 cocktails, which doubled the previous record, resulting in £1,000 in revenue for my employer and some extra happy breakfasts for my customers.’
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