How to Write Achievements on Your CV Without Making Them Sound Ridiculous

I tell people all the time that their CV needs achievements.

Then I see what some CV advice has taught them to do and immediately regret it.

Apparently every bullet needs a number.

Every action needs a dramatic result.

Everything you touched needs to have improved by at least 37%.

So we end up with CVs saying things like:

“Improved stakeholder relationships by 40%.”

“Enhanced team efficiency by 35%.”

“Increased communication effectiveness by 25%.”

What does any of that mean?

I’m completely in favour of putting achievements on your CV.

I just want them to be believable.

Start by forgetting the CV

If you’re struggling to think of achievements, staring at the existing document usually doesn’t help.

Instead, think about each job you’ve had and ask yourself:

What am I actually proud of?

What did you fix?

What did you build?

What went particularly well?

What were you trusted with?

What did your manager thank you for?

What would your former colleagues say you were really good at?

What was better when you left than when you arrived?

Those questions tend to produce much better answers than:

“What metrics can I put on my CV?”

An achievement doesn’t always need a number

Let’s kill this one immediately.

Numbers can make achievements stronger.

They are not compulsory.

If you built a new team from scratch, that’s an achievement.

If you launched your company’s first graduate programme, that’s an achievement.

If you took over a failing client relationship and retained the account, that’s an achievement.

If you were selected to lead a difficult transformation project, that tells me something useful.

None of those requires you to invent a percentage.

Use numbers when they add meaning

Numbers are brilliant when they’re genuine.

“Managed a team” becomes more useful when I know it was a team of 35.

“Increased revenue” becomes considerably more interesting when you tell me it went from £3 million to £5 million.

“Reduced time to hire” becomes meaningful if it went from 62 days to 38.

“Managed a budget” changes when I discover it was £12 million.

Numbers can demonstrate impact, but they can also demonstrate scale.

That’s often just as useful.

Explain enough for the achievement to mean something

“Delivered £2m saving.”

Excellent.

How?

Was that £2 million against a £3 million cost base or a £3 billion one?

Did you renegotiate contracts? Automate something? Restructure a team? Close a site? Find an accounting error?

A number without context isn’t always as impressive as people think.

The strongest CV achievements usually contain enough information for me to understand both what happened and your contribution to it.

Don’t take credit for things you didn’t do

If your company increased revenue by £100 million while you worked there, that doesn’t automatically mean you increased revenue by £100 million.

Recruiters aren’t stupid.

If the achievement sounds implausibly large compared with your role, I’m going to ask about it.

And if you get to interview and it becomes obvious that “led” actually means “attended two meetings”, you’ve created a much bigger problem than the original CV bullet solved.

You don’t need to make yourself sound superhuman.

You need to accurately show the value you created.

Responsibilities and achievements need each other

There’s another extreme I see.

People get told to remove all responsibilities and suddenly their CV becomes a collection of impressive-sounding results with almost no explanation of what their actual job was.

I still need context.

Imagine:

Operations Manager

• Reduced costs by £750,000.
• Improved customer satisfaction by 18%.
• Delivered £3m transformation programme.

Those are interesting.

But I’d still like to know what operation you managed.

How big was it? What were you responsible for? What sort of business was this?

Responsibilities tell me the job.

Achievements tell me how you performed in it.

A strong CV normally needs both.

Ordinary work can still contain good evidence

Not everybody has doubled revenue, saved millions or launched something enormous.

That’s fine.

Maybe you consistently exceeded your targets.

Maybe you trained new starters.

Maybe you improved a process.

Maybe you took on additional responsibilities.

Maybe customers specifically requested you.

Maybe you were promoted.

Maybe you reduced errors.

Maybe you became the go-to person for a particular problem.

Don’t dismiss achievements because they don’t sound like something from a CEO’s annual report.

The point is to give me evidence that you did more than simply occupy the chair.

Your CV should sound like you

This matters.

If you’ve never used the phrase “spearheaded cross-functional strategic initiatives” in your life, I’m not convinced it suddenly needs to appear six times on your CV.

Clear English is fine.

Actually, clear English is preferable.

Tell me what you did and why it mattered.

You don’t need to dress every achievement up in corporate language to make it impressive.

Often the achievement is impressive enough.

Go back through your CV now

Look at your last two or three jobs.

For each one, can I see what you were responsible for?

Then can I see evidence that you were good at it?

If the second part is missing, that’s where I’d start.

It’s one of the biggest differences between a CV that simply documents somebody’s career and one that actually sells their value.

And it’s exactly why I wrote Your CV Looks Fine. So Why Isn’t It Getting Interviews?. Some genuinely excellent people have completely average CVs because the evidence of what makes them excellent never made it onto the page.

If you’re not sure whether yours has the same problem, put it through my Free CV Score.

Score your CV free and see whether your impact is actually coming through.