Resume - Accomplishments vs. Skills

Although many resumes I see include a technical skills list, some candidates take a different path and emphasize achievements rather than skills. This approach is seen more with management and tech lead resumes, but it could potentially be used by any experienced engineer.

For instance, here is a skills-focused presentation:

Skills:

• ASP.NET: 3 years
• C#: 3 years
• JavaScript: 1 year

And here is a more achievement-focused version:

Key Accomplishments:

• Designed and implemented an e-commerce site in just six months using ASP.NET.
• Developed business logic for a highly scalable multiuser environment in C#, enabling support for up to 10,000 concurrent users.
• Refactored a site’s JavaScript code into reusable libraries, reducing file count from over 100 down to 25.

It could be argued that your accomplishments should be listed within your work experience section. However, the same could be said of the skills inventory. Hence if you do decide to have either section you should include only your most important skills or achievements to reduce redundancy.

So just how do you spin a technical skill into an accomplishment? Think less about what technologies you used and more about what you did with that technology. Why was that technology chosen? Did that choice make a difference? How exactly was the technology applied? Can you quantify the results? Can you describe a discernable outcome, either on the project, the team, the product, or the company? And what part did you play in all of this? These are all things you can list as accomplishments.