Employment Digest has an interesting post on the qualities that potential employers want to see, and how these qualities can be translated on a resume.  Among them:

·         Communication Skills: For example, the phrase “Ability to be persuasive when interacting with clients, junior colleagues and CEO both in person and via telephone and e-mail” or  “Wrote clear, informative and effective guidelines to ensure successful project execution.”

·         Motivation/Initiative: For example, the phrase “Set and achieved challenging goals while demonstrating persistence, commitment and dedication” or “Identified and implemented ways to improve and promote quality through accuracy and thoroughness.”

·         Leadership: For example, the phrase “Inspired, motivated and incentivized a team of talented professionals performance” or “Monitored, evaluated and enhanced individual and team performance.”

·         Flexibility/Adaptability: For example, the phrase “Adapted to changing needs of individual business units” or “Followed company guidelines and instructions and adapted rapidly to management directional changes.”

·         Organizational Skills:  For example, the phrase “Planned and prioritized to ensure that set deadlines are met” or “Coordinated and scheduled colleagues’ work.”

I appreciate the spirit of this post, because it’s always important to consider the point of view of the employer when crafting a resume, and these are qualities that most, if not all employers, would look for.  However, I do feel that these examples are a bit vague.  What challenging goals did you set, and how exactly did you achieve them?  What specific things did you do to motivate your team to perform?  What was involved in scheduling your team’s work?

Remember that employers want to see concrete examples of how you were able to contribute to a former company, and how the organization was better off as a result of the work that you performed.  This means that in addition to describing attractive qualities and skills, you will want to use hard numbers and statistics that show quantitative change.