When looking for a new job, one of the most significant factors that come into play is accountability. Any prospective employer will review your work history to determine how reliable you are as an individual. Therefore, when creating your resume, it is important to portray yourself honestly and showcase your reliability to an employer.

What Makes a Candidate Truly “Reliable?”

Reliability can come across in many facets during your career:

• Taking responsibility for your actions
• Completing tasks by their assigned deadlines
• Staying consistent with your goals

Your reliability must come across in your resume. At the end of the day, employers are looking to hire someone they can trust and rely on. So, take a look at your resume and see if it showcases key accomplishments and action items that genuinely impacted the company. If your resume is missing some key achievements, add them!

Here is a great format to follow:

“Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y], by doing [Z].”

This formula allows you to focus on your accomplishments and offer insight into how you have provided value to previous employers.

Dive into what you started with, how you improved it, and how long it took to see success. Following this formula also gives interviewers a chance to get a sense of your work ethic and accomplishments. Plus, it allows for great talking points during an interview!

Resume Red Flags to Avoid

Not Focusing on Your Accomplishments

In Adam Robinson’s book, The Best Team Wins, Adam speaks on the importance of focusing on one’s accomplishments throughout their career. If a person can’t talk about their accomplishments, many employers will see this as a red flag and move on to other candidates. 

When it comes to creating your resume, it’s essential to add to it as successes come by continually. If you quantitatively describe your accomplishments, like with the above formula, you can guarantee that an interviewer will concentrate on those points.

That way, during an interview, you can recall those moments easily, which allows you to showcase your expertise and your ability to complete goals.

Job-Hopping

In today’s world, it’s not uncommon to go from job to job every few years. But, it’s important to remember how that can look from an interviewer’s perspective. Continual job-hopping is another red flag for many companies.

Our recommendation is, if you’re going to change jobs, try to stay within that company for at least two years. Greatness and new opportunities often come within that third-year mark. Staying with a company for over two years will allow you to gain invaluable experiences, boost your resume, and showcase reliability.

Additionally, companies may be hesitant to bring on and invest in an employee that has a history of leaving jobs after a year and a half. Understandably, there can be plenty of good reasons to leave a job before two years, but be mindful that you are leaving for the right reasons.

Always Keep Improving

At the end of the day, the most significant factor in having your accountability come through on your resume is continually improving.

Improve your resume writing skills, improve your industry knowledge, improve your time management.

Improve, improve, improve!

Embrace new challenges and find new opportunities to better yourself. Your current employer will appreciate you more for it, and it will provide new skills and experiences to add to your resume.

If you need more help with accountability, your resume, or just finding an advocate who can help get your next best career in Ag, contact us today!