How to add metrics to your career story
Here are some tips and tricks on how to add metrics to your career story. There is no need to make anything up!
One of the key phrases at Unleash World 2023 was we need to:
focus on impact not input.
Now this isn’t new, but the message is getting a wider airing. Creating an impact statement is something many people struggle with, especially how to add metrics to your career story. This can be your CV, LinkedIn profile, and elevator pitch. Very often I hear people say that they either don’t have metrics in their job, or they don’t have access to the necessary data – which is not true. We all do. It’s knowing how to dig them out.
There is always a way to quantify part of your current or past roles, even if you don’t have access to the numbers withut needing to falsify anything.
Old story, new message
I love this parable about bricklayers that illustrates what I am about to say perfectly. The parable comes from Christopher Wren rebuilding St. Paul’s cathedral. He came to the site one day and saw three bricklayers. He asked them what they were doing and all three gave very different responses. The first said, “I’m laying bricks.” The second said, “I’m building a wall.” The third said, “I’m building a cathedral.”
All three were bricklayers and did the same job but they all had different perspectives about their work and role.
How to move from input to impact
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of how to quantify your work experience and add metrics to your career story:
1. Breakdown your role into segments
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What is the purpose of your job?
- What tasks are / were you accountable for?
Write these down for each job you’ve held and the specific responsibilities that came with it as well as the skills that were required.
2. Evaluate your accomplishments.
if you are not keeping a success chronicle start now. This is a record of all your achievements no matter how small because it’s easy to forget. For each role write down your key accomplishments:
- Did you exceed sales targets?
- Did you reduce costs?
- Did you manage a team that consistently exceeded KPIs?
- Did you improve the process?
Worth a read: The importance of understanding your strengths – 3 Plus International
3. Identify the impact of your work.
Reflect on the overall impact of your accomplishments and establish what impact you had on the business – the results. This is the shift to laying bricks or building a cathedral.
For example:
- How much time did your efficiency project save?
- Were you able to save lives/jobs?
- Did you expand the market?
- Improve stakeholder relations?
Establish the metrics.
If you’re in sales or marketing, this might be easier—but for other job families, you might have to think outside the box.
Other factors to consider are:
- Size of budget, team, market?
- Number of targeted audience
- The level of the people you were engaged with. Were they CEOs, Cabinet Ministers, high high-ranked diplomats?
For example:
At the beginning of the energy crisis the EU wanted to reach as many governments as possible with energy saving strategies. I led a team of policy advisors and in three monts we had designed and delivered a Pan-European sustainable energy conference, to share strategies on dealing with the energy crisis.The conference was held in Paris and live-streamed across 27 countries, with 1000 participants attending in personn, including national Energy Ministers, MEPs, and senior civil servants and business executives. We had 20000 virtual participants and the guidebook was downloaded half a million times.
If you are still struggling with how to add metrics to your CV or LinkedIn profile ask yourself these additional questions :
- How many?
- How frequency?
- Timeline?
The final question which many find helpful is what would have happened if I had screwed up or hadn’t done our jobs properly.
- If information is confidential give a percentage change: Increased sales year on year by 7%
Like those bricklayers, we are all mainly cogs in big machines and the smallest mistake can have a big impact.
Only you can decide if you want to be funky or functional. Your own voice is something you have control over.
If you need support creating your career story get in touch with 3Plus today
