About Accomplishments...

Documenting accomplishments is one of three core data points in identifying the work you will find most satisfying. You will find that the use of accomplishments changes in the phases of career management.

In the insight or self-assessment phase, it is important to identify as many accomplishments as you can that involved skill and experience and which resonate with you intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

For example, you may have created results for your company through financial analysis, but you did not find that work satisfying. Your demonstration of leadership may have been rewarded with a senior administrative role and, although you may have been a very effective operations manager, you were always uncomfortable.

We will talk later about including these experiences in your presentations of yourself, but for now, be selfish and honest. Record those accomplishments that required technical and transferable skills, experience and called on your personal traits - integrity, perspective, humor - to produce a result and which continue to give you satisfaction when you reflect on them.

Utilizing the STAR worksheet, fully describe the actions you took - STAR statements are 10% about framing the situation and task, 60% about what you did and 30% about results. (We are introducing the STAR worksheet to record your accomplishments. It provides the mechanics to later turn the accomplishments into verbal and written presentations.)

Only by fully describing what you did, can you use the skill inventory and identify actions you took which led to your successes. By completing an analysis of 10 accomplishments, you will probably find a pattern of skills you rely on.

In subsequent sessions we will show how to condense your accomplishments into two-minute presentations or stories that demonstrate what you want and can do well.

Finally, we will learn how to turn those accomplishments into written statements for your resume.