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A head recruiter at Amazon says the best resumes are data-based - and there's an easy formula you can follow

Aug 2, 2018, 01:00 IST

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  • Your résumé is a recruiter's first impression of you during the job search.
  • Celeste Joy Diaz, a recruiting manager at Amazon, said she's impressed when applicants ground their accomplishments in data.
  • "We know that our candidates have done a lot of things, but we really want to know, 'what does that mean,'" Diaz told Business Insider.

Hiring managers look to your résumé to find out all about your previous jobs and experiences.

Courtesy of Celeste Joy Diaz

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But Celeste Joy Diaz, a recruiting manager at Amazon, said there's a right way to talk about yourself - and quite a few ways to mess it up.

For starters, you can't just name drop the company or your job title. That doesn't give any perspective on what you did every day.

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Providing a rundown of your entire job description also doesn't quite work.

"We know that our candidates have done a lot of things, but we really want to know, 'what does that mean,'" Diaz told Business Insider.

Career experts like executive résumé writer and career strategist Adrienne Tom agree. You can't just state your job title, company, or your daily tasks and expect recruiters to be impressed by you - or even understand what it is that you do.

"A job title alone is not enough to clarify personal value, complexity of skill set, or breadth of expertise," Tom previously told Business Insider. "What matters most in a résumé will be the results that each individual has generated within their roles, regardless of title or rank."

Delete the laundry list of your daily tasks from your résumé - and use this phrase instead

"Titles are great, but we want to understand what was the project you owned, what was the scope of a project, and what did you accomplish," Diaz sad.

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And to truly win over Amazon recruiters like Diaz, specify with numbers the value you brought to your company. Diaz told Business Insider that this is a winning phrase:

I created a solve for X amount of customers and it saved X amount of money, using X skill.

This is a great phrase to include in your résumé because it communicates the financial benefit you bring to a company. And bringing in more money is exactly why someone would want to hire you.

Not every role has a clear financial output (unlike positions in, say, sales), but any professional can put their successes into numbers.

I'm a journalist who doesn't know how much revenue I drive, but I would still be able to implement this. In a résumé, I write something like: "I wrote X number of articles a week, attracting X amount of unique views each month."

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You could also write how you exceeded your goals, how many projects you started or led, the size of your team or client base, or how many new clients you garnered.

"No position is exempt from measuring results," Tina Nicolai, executive career coach and founder of Résumé Writers' Ink , previously told Business Insider. "And metrics help employers determine if a person is capable of leading a team, managing clients, or growing the business."

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