Putting numbers on your work: the three-question method

"Managed commercial reporting" says nothing. "Commercial reporting cut from fourteen dashboards to three, monthly production down from six days to four hours" says everything, including what the person can do. The difference is not style, it is checkability: the second can be probed in an interview, so it is worth something.

The three questions

How many? How many people, euros, files, clients, square metres, references. The easiest question, and the most often skipped.

From what to what? The best of the three, because it tells a before and an after. "Processing time cut from nine days to two." "Data-entry error rate divided by four." Nobody needs to know your trade to understand.

In how long? The same result achieved in three months or three years does not describe the same person.

"But I have no numbers"

Almost always false. A care assistant knows how many residents they look after. A waiter knows the covers. A teacher knows the class size. A developer knows how many people use what they built. The number exists, it was simply never written down, because it looked obvious from the inside.

Numbers not to use

Ones you could not defend. An invented figure, or one lifted from a company report without knowing how it was computed, turns against you in the first interview: the question "how did you measure that?" always comes. An honest order of magnitude beats borrowed precision. "Around forty files a week" is perfectly acceptable.

The proportion rule

Aim for at least four quantified achievements out of ten. Below that, the resume reads like a job description. Above eight out of ten it becomes a dashboard and loses readability. The remaining bullets show breadth, not performance.