TheStatutoryApe said:
Actually I seriously mean no way to quantify it. I work as a security guard. The only number I could come up with (I had already been told numbers are important) for my resume was the number of pages I write in my report. I could try the number of employees I have trained but I doubt I could remember. Also many of them were fired (most of our guards get fired) so I can't really show any great success in my training abilities. No records are kept of crime statistics so I can't really show results in regard to prevention. I very rarely come into contact with the sort of people we take as clients so have never actually gotten us any. I've proposed a few ideas in regards to things that we can do to improve our operations but my bosses are stuborn and much prefer to have things done their way. Essentially all I have is that I know my job well and do it.
In a way what the fellow Cyrus said. You have to be imaginative and think out of the box (THE OPPOSITE OF LINEAR THINKING -- see why I made the long post about whole brain
thinking, lol).
I am not advocating being dishonest. What I am saying is that I would dare assume almost as fact that if you work as a security guard yet you participate in this forum, there's some TANGIBLE value added you've brought to that organization.
Are you still there?
Here's something I go over with staff. It is tedious but works wonders. Take 1 week and literally write down EVERYTHING YOU DO + THE WAY YOU DO IT. I said it was tedious, but if you can manage enough discipline to master this best practice once, it will pay off years to come.
The problem is most people don't really know what they are doing in their jobs. And by that I mean, you know how one drives to work and day dreams for about 5 mins, and when you "wake up" you are at your destination?
Well your subconscious took over so you were hardly aware. The same thing with mundane tasks, or everyday jobs. Ok let's take the training thing. You said you trained employees, right?
Here's the difference between how you may think about things from now and for years to come vs. before. Let's say you were tasked with training employees. Basically what you had to do is copy some papers, show them a video on how to lock up (making this stuff up as an example) and give them a personal tour of the facilities. When whomever first gave you the task, it was a mess - there were no binders, the video was long and boring and there was no systematic way of giving the trainee a guided tour of the facilities.
When you trained them (and this is the stuff I am talking about that people don't "record"...), you made a few binders for them, you had them only watched the first 15 minutes of the video and you created a "pre-tour" written outline. In other words, you wrote down a little guide to the facility so as you all walk through the compound (or whatever), you could point to stuff as opposed to everyone asking "what's that" or "what's this".
The point is that you had you done it the way it has always been done, it would have taken you 5 hours. With the new changes you made - proactive changes you made of your own accord - the process now takes 2.5 hours. Not only that, you wrote up your little "how-to" guide and gave it to your boss.
You can now LEGITIMATELY claim the benefit that results from cutting the training time from 5 hrs to 2.5. Perhaps you find out the total cost of training @ 5 hours vs. that at 2.5 and that is what you claim on your resume.
Yes it would be nice if you knew more about the employees. Also though, recognize that while some of the employees may have been fired, that has nothing to do with the benefit you created with your new way of doing things because for all you know they could have been fired after 5 hours of training vs. 2.5.
This is the sort of stuff I have been mentoring younger employees about for years. Even if your boss never, ever, ever looks at what you wrote, the point is that in the business world especially, for the most part "if it's not written, it's not real".
If you did something major, you can proactively do some sort of presentation. If not, just cc your boss and let him or her know what you did and now you have documentation. Let's say somewhere down the road, you apply for a job and in the unlikely event you put this on your cv and they call an old employer, you absolutely have grounds to claim what you have written.
That is what I mean by packaging. Employees ad this kind of value all the time but the point is very few show it to their bosses and quite frankly we don't have time. It'd be nice to say "how have you added value show me what you did to improve things" but there just aren't enough hours in the day.
That's why I said *always*. One reason I can say this is proven by the fact that you were/are employed there! If you weren't adding some kind of value, you wouldn't be there.
So my advice would be to do the exercise where you record what you do. Then, you'll have info that you can reflect on and say "hmm what did I do to improve this". Even things simply like fixing messy file cabinets. The point is that time is money and if you saved just 5 mins over the course of 52 weeks...you get my drift. There's a dollar value associated with every thing in a business.
And going forward, if for no other reason than to be proactive about your own career development, make sure you record these little "contributions" and to also document them!
A home run is when you figure out a way to do something better, you present it to your bosses, then you help them implement it across the entire company, organization or whatever. Those are the sort of changes that has a gal/fellow starting off in the lunch room and becoming Senior Vice President (or <insert name of senior position here>) in no time.
Hope this makes better sense...
Edit:
One quick point, if you are going for jobs where you might be doing something slightly different, the whole bit ^^ is esp. helpful. I helped a kid increase his salary by almost 100% by the slight changes he did on his resume. The thing was the substance was there, but it just wasn't packaged right. As I said, I am speaking from experience. And quite frankly I have hired people over more obviously qualified people because they knew how to make the case to me that they were the right person for the job despite their lack of experience (hell, look at the President, lol...j/k).
Another point I wanted to make. The best interviews happen before THE INTERVIEW! In other words, if you/when you get your interview, you don't want any surprise questions. There are only about 20 or so questions in a few variations that employers ask and you should have WELL SCRIPTED answers for these.
As an example, the kid I helped with the job, about 3 hours before he went in I said to him "so did you go over your interview questions" and he said "uh, what's that" - WTF?
So, I quickly helped him write out about 10 questions I'd knew he get, I didn't even need the name of the company. Luckily he got the job and in fact when I asked him "what did they ask you", his response was "basically everything you said".
Questions like:
"So Mr./Ms. tell me about your work at XYZ?"
Unexperienced interviewee..."uh, uh" starts describing what they did for about 10 mins.
You: you briefly discuss what you did and spend MOST of your time describing THE RESULTS of your work. The interview immediately says, wow this is someone who has evidence that they can tangibly contribute to an organization...
"Why did you choose to study xyz"
"why did you choose xyz school"
"why are you interested in this job"
"what are your strengths" (should be something you'd be called upon to do a lot at your new job. For instance, let's say you are interviewing to be an investment banking analyst and your are a security guard now. IB is notorious for being unpredictable. You might get a call at 3am in the night to come into work. Well, you give a story about how you constantly manage the unpredictable in your job as a security guard. Or, let's say you want to be an exotic interest rate options trader. This is a very risk intense line of work...your heart is racing all the time. This is similar to being a security guard, when sometimes you hear bumps in the night and you have no idea what it could be. You have to think fast, your heart is racing...etc. Of course I am making this up. The point is that people really need to understand what kind of game it is. a lot of people may think this is over the top and that is why they have all the qualifications and no job and someone with half the qualifications and 100x the sell got the job...)
"what are your weaknesses" (note: NEVER, EVER mention something related to a critical part of the potential job...yet not something cheezy...for instance, back in the day a good 10 years ago when I first left undergrad, I'd say something like "well in an increasingly global economy, I feel that my contribution to a firm could be improved by learning another language. Though I know x and y, I would like to learn z. I am doing a, b, c to work on that... end of story)
"where do you see yourself in 5, 10...whatever years"
"why do you want to work for this company"
"why should I hire you when you don't have experience"
"what do you do for fun"
"tell me about the classes you took"
the list goes on. The point that I am making is this: you want to paint a picture. Every single one of your answers should clearly demonstrate in some way why you are the right person for the job and why it will be a good fit. Very, very premeditated without looking TOO obvious. This also requires knowing something about the company.
