Make impact obvious in seconds

How to Quantify Achievements on Your Resume

Recruiters scan fast. Quantified achievements help them trust your impact at a glance. Use this simple formula, then re-scan your resume to confirm attention moved to your strongest proof.

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The formula

Use this structure:

Achieved [RESULT] by doing [ACTION] resulting in [METRIC/PROOF]

You can swap the order depending on your role. The key is: outcome + credibility.

What to quantify (even if you don’t have perfect numbers)

  • Revenue / growth: pipeline, ARR, conversions, retention, upsells
  • Cost / efficiency: hours saved, cycle time, automation, tooling improvements
  • Quality: defects reduced, SLA improvements, incident reduction
  • Scale: users served, requests per day, budgets managed, team size
  • Risk: compliance, security fixes, error reduction

If you don’t have exact numbers, use ranges (e.g., “reduced cycle time ~20%”) or proxy metrics (tickets resolved, pages shipped, customer NPS trend). Never invent.

Before/after examples

Software engineer
Improved performance of the application.
Improved API performance by refactoring query patterns, reducing p95 latency from 900ms → 220ms and cutting cloud spend 18%.
Product manager
Led the launch of a new feature.
Launched onboarding improvements by redesigning activation flow, increasing week‑1 activation from 42% → 55% and reducing support tickets 12%.
Operations
Managed processes for the team.
Standardized team processes by creating SOPs and dashboards, reducing handoff time 30% and improving on‑time delivery from 78% → 91%.
Marketing
Worked on email campaigns.
Optimized lifecycle emails by segmenting audiences and A/B testing copy, increasing CTR 22% and improving trial→paid conversion 9%.

Make quantification scan-friendly

Numbers only help if they’re easy to see. Put metrics near the start of the bullet, keep bullets short, and avoid burying impact in the last clause.

Next: improve your summary and verbs — resume summary guide and action verbs list.