Sometimes two, three or even twelve small achievements can be lumped together to make them sound better. For example: If you taught the same accounting seminar every day for a year, that's fairly routine. But if you've taught the seminar 285 times with consistently excellent evaluations, that's exciting. [It's even better if you can produce the rave reviews on the course evaluation forms.]

Sometimes companies abandon projects or shelve reports you've worked hard on. You still accomplished something even though they didn't use your work. Let's suppose you spent six months writing a report, and the leadership team shelved it. There's no "So what?" Nothing great happened. Your effort can still be written as an accomplishment, like this: "Designed research study, interviewed 438 people, collected data from 27 academic sources and presented 187 page strategic report to management."

Bad examples. These are poorly-written success statements:

• Managed insurance, pension, employee savings, tuition reimbursement programs. (So what?)

• Advised parent company senior executives and joint venture partners and managers on issues of strategic planning and daily operations. (Merely a statement of job duties and responsibilities.) | Next -->