Key takeaways
- An achievement has three parts: a past-tense verb, what you did, and what changed as a result, measured with a figure, a scope or a before and after.
- If you have no sales figures, measure something else: volume, time saved, errors reduced, people reached or something done for the first time.
- Never use a figure you could not explain at interview. If you are not sure of it, round down or give the scope instead of the number.
- Two to four achievements for recent roles and one or none for older ones, ordered by what the job advert asks for.
Duty or achievement: the difference in one line
«Responsible for invoicing» is a duty: it says what was in your job description, and anyone who held that role could write it, whether they did it well or badly. «Cut invoicing errors from 3% to 0.5% in six months» is an achievement: it says what changed because you were there. The person shortlisting does not need you to explain what an accounts assistant does; they need to know how well you did it.
That does not mean deleting your duties. The National Careers Service suggests describing what you did in each role in two or three lines, and the European Youth Portal adds the missing piece: emphasise your accomplishments, with numbers if possible. Because the first pass over a CV lasts seconds, whatever is not in the first lines of each role is unlikely to be read.
of the 2,201 hiring managers and HR staff surveyed by CareerBuilder and Harris Poll chose «achieved» as one of the words they most like to see on a CV. It is a 2013 survey, carried out in the United States.
Source: CareerBuilder and Harris Poll, survey of 2,201 hiring managers in the US, 2013 (published by CBIA, 2014)chose «increased/decreased», the words that signal a measurable change. In the same survey, «improved» reached 48%.
Source: CareerBuilder and Harris Poll, survey of 2,201 hiring managers in the US, 2013 (published by CBIA, 2014)was the average length of a first CV review in Ladders' 2018 eye-tracking study. That is enough time to read the job title and the first lines of each role.
Source: Ladders, Eye-Tracking Study, 2018How to write CV achievements: verb, what and result
Almost every well-written achievement follows the same order: it opens with an action verb in the past tense, says what you acted on and ends with the result. «Redesigned the purchase approval process, cutting sign-off time from 9 to 4 days in one quarter». One line, two at most. British CVs usually drop the «I» and start straight with the verb.
The STAR method that the National Careers Service recommends (situation, task, action, result) is the long version of the same idea. On the CV you keep the action and the result; the situation and the task are what you tell at interview, which is exactly where you will be asked for them.
| Part | What it answers | Example | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Verb | What you did | Redesigned | «Responsible for», «involved in», which do not say what you did |
| What | What you acted on | the purchase approval process | Naming the whole department instead of the specific thing |
| Result | What changed and by how much | cutting sign-off time from 9 to 4 days in one quarter | An adjective («successfully», «effectively») instead of a fact |
What to do when you have no figures
Most people do not work in sales, and many have never seen a dashboard with their team's numbers. That does not mean they have no achievements; it means measuring something else. A result can be expressed as volume, time, quality, scope or something that did not exist before.
To find yours, reread your appraisals and the objectives you were set each year. Add thank-you emails and the reports you used to send: that is usually where the numbers you have forgotten are hiding. Former colleagues tend to remember what you did better than you do.
| What you measure | The question that finds it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Volume | How much did you handle a day, a month or a year? | «Handled around 40 customer queries a day by phone and chat» |
| Time | What started taking less time because of something you did? | «Built a template that cut the weekly report from a day to two hours» |
| Quality | Which errors, complaints or returns went down? | «Reorganised the warehouse by turnover and mis-picked orders almost disappeared» |
| Scope | How many people, sites or clients did your work reach? | «Trained all 25 staff across three branches on the new system» |
| First time | What exists today that did not exist before? | «Wrote the team's first process manual, now used for every new starter» |
| Trust | What were you given because of how you worked? | «Chosen to cover the team leader role during two periods of leave» |
The Cernoria rule: if you cannot defend it, leave it out
An inflated achievement is the most expensive mistake on a CV, because it comes to light at the worst moment: when an interviewer asks how you got to that 40%. So we apply three rules, and you can apply them by hand. First: if you do not remember the exact figure, use a conservative one. Second: if it was a team result, the verb says so («coordinated», «was part of the team that…», «contributed to»). Third: you should be able to talk about each achievement for two minutes, with the problem, what you did and what happened next.
Nor do you add what did not happen to make the line sound better. If the project launched but you do not know what result it had, the achievement is launching it on time, and that counts too. A CV with three modest, true achievements holds up in any interview; one with five spectacular ones does not.
At Cernoria we put it like this: an achievement is not the best thing you can say about yourself, it is the best thing you can prove. If you could not explain it in detail to the person about to hire you, it does not go on the CV.
30 examples of achievements by job area
Five examples for each of six areas, all using the same formula. The people, companies and figures are made up: they show the shape and the kind of result each area measures, not text to copy. Notice that not all of them involve money; several measure time, quality or scope.
Hit 112% of the 2025 annual target, winning 14 new SME clients across the West Midlands.
Won back 9 of the 20 dormant accounts in the portfolio with a visit plan and volume discounts.
Shortened the sales cycle from 60 to 42 days by building template proposals for each sector.
Opened the North East territory for the distributor: from zero to 35 stockists in eight months.
Trained the three sales executives who joined in 2024; all three hit target before their sixth month.
Cut cost per new customer by 22% by rebalancing the budget between Google Ads and Meta.
Launched the brand's monthly newsletter, which reached 8,000 subscribers in its first year.
Rewrote the listings for the 120 best-selling products on the online shop, lifting conversion from 1.4% to 2.1%.
Coordinated the company's presence at three trade shows, logging 300 business contacts.
Built the team's first metrics dashboard, used by the leadership team at every monthly meeting since.
Maintained a 4.7 out of 5 satisfaction score across more than 3,000 conversations in a year.
Cut email response time from 48 to 12 hours by reorganising the queue by priority.
Wrote the 40 template replies the whole team now uses for the most common complaints.
Retained 30 of the 52 customers who asked to cancel in the quarter with retention offers.
Chosen to train every new starter in the contact centre throughout 2025.
Reduced picking errors from 1.8% to 0.6% by redesigning the pick route.
Negotiated with two new carriers, cutting delivery cost per order by 15%.
Reorganised warehouse shifts and removed the standing Friday overtime.
Coordinated the move of the distribution centre over one weekend without stopping dispatch.
Introduced cycle counting: the annual stock discrepancy fell from 4% to 1%.
Automated the weekly sales report in SQL and Power BI, taking it from a day's work to an hour.
Migrated three services to the cloud with a team of four, with no downtime for users.
Cut app load time from 4.2 to 1.8 seconds by optimising database queries.
Wrote the automated tests for the payments module; production bugs halved.
Documented the internal API, cutting onboarding for each new developer from three weeks to one.
Reduced month-end close from ten to six working days by automating bank reconciliations.
Spotted £14,000 of duplicate supplier payments and set up the check that stops them recurring.
Managed credit control for 220 customers, cutting debt over 90 days from 12% to 5%.
Digitised five years of invoices, which can now be found in seconds rather than hours.
Prepared the documentation for two external audits, both closed with no findings.
The verbs that carry most weight with employers
In the CareerBuilder and Harris Poll survey of 2,201 hiring managers and HR staff in the United States, the favourite CV words were almost all verbs of something done: achieved, improved, trained, managed, created, resolved. The least liked were self-praise and clichés. The survey is from 2013 and American, but the pattern travels well to a British CV.
In practice, the verb has to say what you did. «Contributed to» and «supported» are honest for a team result, but if the work was yours, use the verb that fits: designed, negotiated, reduced, launched, trained, recovered.
How many achievements per role, and in what order
You do not need an achievement for every duty. What matters is that recent roles show results and that the first line in each role answers what the advert asks for. If you are applying for an analyst post, the data achievement goes first even if the sales one looks more impressive.
| Role | How many | What goes first |
|---|---|---|
| Current or most recent | Two to four | The one that answers the advert's first requirement |
| Roles from the last ten years | One to three | The one with the widest scope or closest to the job you want |
| Older roles | One or none | Only if it explains something about your profile today |
| Placements, volunteering or projects | One or two | A concrete result, however small |
A worked example: the same role, before and after
A made-up case to see the method in action. Lucy Example spent four years as a purchasing assistant at Northgate Supplies and wants to apply for a purchasing analyst job. Her CV listed duties. This is how she turned them into achievements.
- List the duties as they stand
Lucy copied the five lines from her role: purchase orders, supplier contact, data entry, delivery tracking and reporting.
- Ask what changed in each
For each duty she looked for a result: what took less time, which errors went down, what was saved or what started to exist. She reread her appraisals and her emails with her manager.
- Pick the measure you can defend
She had the exact supplier saving in a report; for delivery times she only had an estimate, so she used the lowest figure she remembered for sure.
- Order by the advert
The advert asked for supplier negotiation and data analysis. Those two achievements went first; delivery tracking came third and data entry left the CV.
Before: «Purchasing Assistant. Purchase orders. Supplier contact. Data entry. Delivery tracking. Reporting».
After, first line: «Renegotiated terms with the 12 main suppliers, saving 7% on annual materials spend».
Second line: «Built the monthly spend-by-supplier report in Excel that management uses to decide on tenders».
Third line: «Cut late deliveries from around 20 to 8 a month with weekly follow-up calls to each supplier».
The final check before you apply
Before you send your CV through Indeed, Reed, Totaljobs, LinkedIn or the employer's site, read each achievement next to the advert and answer these questions. If any answer is «no», that line gets fixed or goes.
- Does it start with a verb that says what you did?
- Does it say what changed, with a figure, a scope or a before and after?
- Could you talk about it for two minutes at interview, with the problem and what happened next?
- Are the figures ones you remember for sure, or a conservative one?
- Does the first achievement in each role answer something the advert asks for?
- Does each achievement fit on one or two lines?
Frequently asked questions
How do I show CV achievements with no work experience?
Use results from your studies, placements, volunteering or part-time jobs, with the same verb, what and result formula. The National Careers Service gives the example of captaining a sports team, which shows leadership and organisation.
What do I put if my job has no numbers?
Measure something else: volume, time saved, errors reduced, people your work reached or something you did for the first time. Almost every role has at least one of those results, even if nobody tracked it.
Can I round the figures in my achievements?
Yes, always down and only when you do not remember the exact number. If you cut a lead time from 9.3 to 4.1 days, «from 9 to 4 days» is fine; «halved» when it was a third is not.
How do I show an achievement that belonged to the whole team?
With a verb that says which part was yours: «coordinated», «was part of the team that», «contributed to». If asked at interview, you explain your specific role; claiming the whole result shows straight away.
Do achievements go in a separate section or under each role?
It is clearest to put them under each role, below the job title and dates, so it is obvious where they happened. A key achievements section at the top only helps if it repeats your two or three strongest.
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