A Guide to CV Achievements and How to List Them

Adding achievements to your CV can elevate your applications and improve your job prospects. Rather than simply listing your roles and responsibilities, CV achievements show the impact you’ve made in your career to date and can make a more positive impression on employers. In this article, we’ll explain why CV achievements can be a powerful catalyst for success, and show you examples of how to add achievements to your job applications.

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Why Include Achievements on Your CV?

Including achievements on your CV helps show employers how much value you’ve added to previous roles. This provides an indication of the impact you can make on their organisation. Simply highlighting your skills and experience on your CV won’t help you stand out from the crowd. There might be hundreds of applicants for each vacancy that show they can do the tasks listed in the job description.

The way to really make an impression is to show how you’ve made a difference to organisations. Achievements might include qualifications you’ve gained, targets you’ve met or exceeded, skills you’ve developed, promotions, processes you’ve improved or contributions to company growth. Achievements of this nature can show you have the skills and strengths necessary to thrive in any role, such as problem-solving, initiative, resilience, commitment, application of technical skills and the ability to manage tasks and projects and deliver results. These are the things that can take your job applications to the next level.

Types of Achievements to Include

Your achievements might be wide-ranging and show a variety of skills, or they could be focused on one area of your career or a specific role you’ve excelled in. The most important thing is identifying your achievements and making them as relevant as possible to the job you’re applying for. Take a look at some of these different types of achievements, to start understanding how to make your CV stand out:

Academic Achievements

Including academic achievements on your CV is particularly useful if the role you’re applying for requires a specialist qualification. They can also be helpful if you’re applying for entry-level roles and you haven’t yet built up a record of achievements in employment. Academic achievements might include degrees you’ve earned with particularly high grades, awards and prizes you’ve won, or funding or fellowships you’ve been granted.

Work Achievements

Work achievements are probably the most relevant to your applications, as they’re likely to showcase the skills and qualities you’ll need for success in the role you’re applying for. Achievements might include feedback from appraisals, sales figures or employee awards. They may also include collective achievements, such as industry awards, company growth figures, or customer feedback.

Personal Achievements

It’s perfectly valid to include personal achievements, if these are relevant to the role you’re applying for. For example, carrying out a home renovation could demonstrate you have the skills for a construction role, or a position in project management. Sporting achievements could help to show you have the dedication and teamwork skills necessary for success.

Volunteer Achievements

Voluntary work is a great way to showcase you have the skills and experience necessary for the job. It can also show you have the initiative, dedication and commitment to thrive in any setting. Achievements might include serving a community food bank to help local people out of poverty, or coaching a children’s sports team to success.

Where to List Achievements on Your Resume

You can either list your achievements throughout your CV, in a dedicated achievements section, or both. The advantage of using a dedicated achievements section is that it makes your achievements easy to identify and understand. However, peppering them throughout your CV can make the document far more engaging overall.

If you’re mentioning achievements throughout your CV, you can include them in every section, including your CV summary. Choose one or two key achievements that can help your application stand out, and mention them in this introductory paragraph to immediately show the reader what you’ve achieved in your career.

Your work experience section is an ideal place to showcase your achievements, as this is the section most employers will pay particular attention to. They also show your achievements in the context of each previous job, giving you the chance to show each has impacted the organisation.

Another place to list your achievements is your education section. If you’ve achieved particularly strong grades or won any academic awards, showcasing these can have a positive impact on your chances. This is particularly true of junior and graduate roles, as employers will pay more attention to your education for these roles.

Finally, you could choose a CV format with achievements in a dedicated section. If you do this, be sure to relate each achievement back to a skill or experience listed in the job description. Your achievements section could go either directly under your work experience, or below your education and skills.

Expert tip:

Achievements will always trump responsibilities when it comes to the impact of your CV. Don’t fill your CV up with descriptions of everyday duties and tasks, but focus each bullet point on proving the impact you’ve made. There will be plenty of candidates who can show they have experience of the necessary duties for the job, but it’s those who show the added value they bring that really stand out.

Elements to Include for Each Achievement

When you’re listing achievements in a dedicated section of your CV, follow this template to make sure you include all the necessary details:

Achievement Name: clearly label your achievement, so the reader can understand it at a glance. Examples include ‘increased profits’, ‘led strategic transformation’, or ‘received customer service award’.
Organisation: mention the organisation or context in which the achievement was completed.
Dates: mention key dates that put the achievement in context. You might want to list your achievements in reverse-chronological order, starting with your most recent, to help the employer understand them in the context of your career.
Scope: describe the scope of your achievements with figures and evidence. This could be team size, budget, duration, customer satisfaction scores or any other figure.
Role and Responsibilities: detail your role and specific contributions towards the achievement, particularly if the achievement was a team effort.
Achievements: highlight measurable outcomes and successes. Outline the impact your achievement had on the organisation and the difference it made to yourself and others.

Examples of How to Include Achievements

Here are some CV examples of achievements that you can use as a guide for writing your own:

Developed new customer processing guidelines, improving conversion rates by 23% and increasing sales revenue by £200,000
Led a departmental hiring review, reducing staff attrition rates by 11% across a two-year period
Collaborated with team members on a digital campaign for a major high-street retailer, winning a UK Marketing Award for Innovation
Managed a team of 12 account executives with company-leading staff satisfaction rates of 4.4 out of 5.
Streamlined supply chain processes, reducing waste while cutting operational costs by £140,000
Implemented departmental cost-saving measures to save the organisation 8% without reducing customer satisfaction
Designed, built and optimised a new customer-facing website, increasing web traffic by 24% and reducing bounce rate by 16%

"Your achievements might be wide-ranging and show a variety of skills, or they could be focused on one area of your career or a specific role you’ve excelled in."

Tailoring Achievements for Different Jobs

An achievement is not just an achievement. You can use each one to showcase various skills and qualities to match the job description or the level of seniority of the role. It’s useful to understand how your key career achievements can be adapted for any job. Take a look at these tips for tailoring your achievements to meet the requirements of any role:

Tailor Achievements To Job Descriptions

Review the job description and identify the key skills and qualities the employer is looking for. Next, assess your career achievements and identify how each one matches the job description. Most achievements can be used to showcase more than one essential skill. For example, exceeding sales targets could help you show your interpersonal skills by winning new clients, while it could also prove your dedication and commitment. Developing successful strategies for business transformation can be a great way to show your analytical thinking or problem-solving, as well as your teamwork and collaboration skills.

Tailor Achievements To Job Levels

As you apply to more senior roles, the achievements you include in your CV are likely to change. For junior and entry-level jobs, it’s often useful to mention educational achievements or skills you’ve gained in your personal life or voluntary roles. For executive or managerial roles, you’re more likely to need recent achievements that show your ability to lead, to bring success to organisations and to handle the responsibility that comes with a senior position.

Key Takeaways for Adding Achievements to Your CV

Adding achievements to your CV can turbocharge your applications and make you stand out in a crowded, competitive field of applicants. Concentrate on showcasing the impact you’ve made because this will give a strong indication to employers about the value you can offer to their organisation. Use a professional CV template that shows your achievements in the most eye-catching way. Sign up to CVwizard to access a wealth of tools and resources, including CV articles, that can improve your chances of job application success.

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Mike Potter

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Mike Potter is an experienced copywriter specialising in careers and professional development. He uses extensive knowledge of workplace culture to create insightful and actionable articles on CV writing and career pathways.