I’m sure you’ll agree that in some cases, things are easier said than done. Add value they say, communicate it effectively, they say. Well, in this post, we’re going to outline some practical steps for determining how you add value. These value adds can then be translated into resume entries or talking points for your next interview.
Think of this as a working session. You’ll need a pen, paper and at least a few minutes. The purpose here is to highlight key areas in which you have demonstrated some skill or competency. Or perhaps have been able to drive an outcome, preferable a successful one, that may apply to a future role, or maybe even a key learning like how to resolve miscommunication or advocate for others.
Step 1: Write down all the things you’ve been involved in.
This could be past jobs, volunteer work, school-related activities, leadership roles, competitions, case studies, presentations, and maybe even a very involved hobby. At this stage, you might want to break these into groups like the ones just mentioned, i.e., work vs. school vs. volunteering. Don’t worry about what you did just yet, instead try to write down every possible involvement where you might have done something, learned something, achieved something, or perhaps gotten an award of some kind.
Step 2: Determine why your involvement was significant.
Were you in a leadership role? Like perhaps the secretary or treasurer for any of these extracurricular activities? Or maybe you were just a member, an employee, an award recipient, a volunteer, etc.
Whatever it was, you’re going to want to clarify why this particular entry is significant.
Step 3: Make the group or team success your success.
It might be challenging to determine why your involvement was significant if you feel like you didn’t directly achieve something. But if you zoom out, you might notice that you enabled a larger win through more minor changes.
Did the groups you work with have overall success in executing an event, completing a task, or reaching a goal? If so, enabling that success is another way you add value.
For example, I worked on a team that created a predictor tool. My job was to manage the tool’s testing and then report the metrics once the tool was in use. The tool was later found to be more than 93% accurate. Did I create this tool? No! Did I do the coding needed to provide the predictions? No. But could this tool have been successfully launched if I didn’t do my part in ensuring testing was complete? Also No! Which is why I could confidently say that my collaboration skills and attention to detail enabled the launch of a predictor tool that was more than 93% accurate and saved the company x dollars.
If you can say the same, this might be an opportunity to show rather than state that you have excellent interpersonal and communication skills, an exceptional conflict resolution style, or a quick and avid learner.
Step 4: Pull a few good STAR scenarios from your list.
If you’re looking at your list and you’ve so far only been able to highlight one or two areas of significant involvement with a wider list of barely relevant activities, then it’s time to switch tactics.
How you can add value in a new role is not always by pointing to a specific skill or achievement. This can also be done by highlighting how you handle various scenarios.
In some cases, an interviewer might ask STAR questions. This refers to the format of the expected response. Namely: situation, task, action, and result. Example of STAR questions include:
Describe a time when you had to work closely with someone whose personality was very different from yours? Or tell me about a time you needed to get information from someone who wasn’t very responsive. What did you do?
Having a few of these anecdotal responses at the ready can be a great way to assist in verbally communicating your value, especially in situations, like internships, where prior or relevant work experience might not be available.
Step 5: Use your scenarios to make a list of hard and soft skills.
Now that you have a pretty good draft of the things you’ve done or were involved with, you can now use that information to determine what skills, both hard and soft, that these may point to.
A hard skill relates to specific technical training or knowledge. In simpler terms, it is a skill that is both teachable and measurable, like accounting, coding, or competency in using a particular tool or software. On the other hand, soft skills refer to qualities or traits like effective communication and are sometimes referred to as “People Skills”.
Maybe while going through your list, you noticed a time when you used a specific tool that required some degree of familiarity to maneuver, e.g., a record management or data entry tool.
Or perhaps your ability to work with different groups or under high-stress situations never occurred to you until you thought of your experience in dealing with a particularly unreasonable boss or micro-manager.
Whatever it is, now that you have the evidence and can speak to it, you’re going to want to make a note of all of those skills.
Step 6: Don’t forget the action words.
Finally, whether in an interview or on your resume, you should be describing your involvement with action words.
For example, in my resume, I tell readers that I have engaged, translated, assisted, connected, partnered, aligned, reduced, supported, collaborated, applied, and analyzed. Without any context, this already sounds like a lot of work – and it was! But I digress.
The point is that this demonstrates that you are actionable and can get things done. From these verbs alone, I can note such skills as a team player – collaborated, partnered, supported – proactive networker – connected, engaged, assisted – as well as potential hard skills – translated, analyzed & reduced, all without any context!
And that’s it! A few practical steps to get you started. If these were helpful or seem useful, then let me know in the comments below. Otherwise, drop a few of your own steps that might help out someone else.
