Resumes - Accomplishmet Bullet's for Multiple Similar Proj.

Submitted by Michael Peterson
in
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I have been reworking my resume to match the MT recommended format with job descriptions followed up by accomplishment bullets. However, I am running into a problem in that many of the accomplishment bullets start to sound similar. I work for a power engineering company doing power plant design projects for various clients. So I may have 2 or 3 projects that have very similar scope and the accomplishments for each project can be very similar. An example accomplishment bullet would be: - Led team in site work and foundation design for a simple cycle power plant. Now this is an effort that may have taken 3-4 months for each project. I can sometimes add some other details, such as meeting schedule or budget on the project, but it seems odd to have the same time of bullet for 2 or 3 similar projects. Any suggestions, comments, help would be appreciated.
Submitted by Julia Havener on Saturday November 24th, 2007 9:57 pm

Pete,

That bullet says what you did, but it doesn't outline the accomplishment very well.

What was outstanding on that project? If you could tell them one thing about it, what would that ONE THING be?

-Saved $1.2 million in construction labor costs for simple cycle power plant.
-Launched new power plant 21 days ahead of schedule.
-Reduced construction waste by 6.1%.

Obviously, I pulled these numbers out of my ear. Action verbs will save your resume and make it very effective. If you can establish the value of the projects you completed, THAT is what you want to convey.

Submitted by Peter Westley on Monday November 26th, 2007 2:31 am

I would also suggest using the multitude of successful, similar projects as an accomplishment in itself.

For example:

- Successfully led team in site work and foundation design for a simple cycle power plant on 3 separate projects.

So work the two or three similar projects into one accomplishment line. Even if they weren't exactly the same.

Hope that helps.

Submitted by David Heyman on Monday November 26th, 2007 11:33 pm

Might I also suggest that you include more industry-specific information? In your business I think there may be a chance that each of these projects is different in the generation capacity or throughput. So perhaps:
[i]
- Led team in site work and foundation design for a simple cycle power plant.
[/i]
becomes
[i]
- Led site work and foundation design for a 110 kV, simple cycle power plant to serve 3 million residential and commercial consumers. [/i]

Look at each project and see what the differentiating factors are for each one.