Every resume should have the almighty dollar sign, euro, yuan, rupee, etc. Let me explain.iCathryn Creating a Diverse Workforce Bring Value to the Team Main Image You need to show, that out of everyone else, YOU will bring the MOST financial value.

Companies looking for YOU are spending LOTS of TIME and MONEY recruiting, hiring, and training you. You are a HUGE investment — a HUGE asset. So you have to DEMONSTRATE your Return On Investment (ROI), based solely on your resume.

No matter what industry or field you’re in, you have to SHOW your WORTH. Whenever I saw a resume that showed how much money they SAVED or MADE for their past employers, that candidate went straight to the top of my list. Because they could QUANTIFY their experiences and skills. Don’t just SAY what you did, PROVE it with NUMBERS. Even if you’re a nonprofit worker, educator, or public servant, you can still demonstrate EFFICIENCY — show how much you SAVED in TIME or LABOR by improving the process by X % which you believe equated to X number of dollars — QUANTIFY YOUR EFFORTS. There’s always a way to prove your financial worth.


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How Do You Prove Your Worth On Your Resume?

And you’re going to ask me, but Cathryn, how do I REALLY do this? What if I’m in foodservice? How do I quantify my resume? Well, have you ever played more than one role? I know I have. Maybe you were a waiter, but you also helped train people and acted as backup manager. If that restaurant had to hire a part-time assistant manager to do that work, how much do you think they would have to pay that person? You take that number and that’s how much you SAVED them per year for however long you did those duties! BOOM! Mic drop. 🙂

Check out the detailed YouTube tutorial on Quantifying your Resume — this will paint the best picture!


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How Can I Make My Resume Look Good with Little Experience?

Ok, how about another example? What about an Office Manager? How could you show your financial value? Maybe you did something that took 10-steps and it took you half a day? But after you started, you improved the process and sped it up to 5-steps and now a quarter of your day is free for you to do something else for your company. Guess what? You just saved your company 25% of your salary PLUS added 25% of your salary towards something that supported revenue. So you saved 25% of your salary and made 25% of your salary through EFFICIENCY. BOOM. Mic dropped again — it’s broken now. 🙂


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How Do You Negotiate a Higher Starting Salary?

So in addition to wowing the recruiter, why else do we show our financial worth on our resume? Because when they ask you about your salary requirements, you need to be able to back up your number and you have nothing in your back pocket BUT your resume. Actually, I have better negotiating strategy, but that’s a different post and video.

But for this scenario, let’s just say you said $60K. They may counteroffer with $40K because they said it’s the market rate per Glassdoor. At this point, you have not been interviewed by the hiring manager, so they know nothing about you. And you’re going to say, “But that’s what I made at my last job…” So they have data to back up their $60K, and you have a statement. (Queue foghorn).

How do you expect them to believe you? Because you said so? 🙂 Besides, even if you did make $60K at your last job, how do they know you gave $60K worth of valuable work to your last company? Because you’re an investment, you should return at least $120K. Think about any investment you have, would you take stock that someone said would break even or worse, lose your money??? ABSOLUTELY NOT. So why would you expect a company to do so?

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Another way to look at it is if I asked for $20 and told you that in a year, I’d give you $20 back. You’d ask me, “What’s the point of that, Cathryn? Really though?” Or what if I told you that in a year, I’d give you $10? You’d probably tell me to go play on a busy freeway. Now, if I were to say that I’d give you back $100, that’d be a little different, right? 🤗

If you quantified your resume, then your counteroffer has legs. You can tell the recruiter how much you saved or made at your last company and how much more value you can bring to theirs. Your liability and risk go way down, and all of a sudden, you’re worth $60K. Is this clicking now??? 🙂 As a former tech exec, recruiter, hiring manager, and of course, job seeker, I’ve been on all sides of the job hunt, the one thing I know for sure… is that MONEY TALKS. You do this, plus all the other tips here — I guarantee you will get a call!

For more valuable tips, don’t forget to check out the rest of them here and the videos. Stay connected with me for more career advice and more job alerts — subscribe to my newsletter below, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. I want to see you succeed!!! 😎🤗💪🏆👍😉


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