Accomplishments are the points that increase reader’s interest in your resume, stimulate a request for a job interview, and really help sell you to an employer — much more so than everyday job duties. In a study by the former Career Masters Institute (now Career Management Alliance), content elements that propel employers to immediately discard resumes include a focus on duties instead of accomplishments, while documented achievements were highly ranked among content elements that employers look for.
Don’t isolate accomplishments in a section by themselves. Everything on your resume should be accomplishments-driven, and isolating accomplishments suggests that the other things you did in your jobs were NOT accomplishments. For more about how to identify your accomplishments, see our article For Job-Hunting Success: Track and Leverage Your Accomplishments and our Accomplishments Worksheet to help you brainstorm your accomplishments.
