How to Quantify Achievements on Your Resume (With Examples)

Why Numbers Win Interviews

Recruiters scan resumes for 7.4 seconds on average. Numbers jump off the page. They're concrete, credible, and instantly communicate scale and impact.

Compare:

• ❌ "Improved sales significantly"
• ✅ "Increased quarterly sales by 34%, adding $420K in revenue"

Same achievement. The second version gets the interview.

What to Quantify

Almost everything can have a number. Here's what to measure:

• Revenue/money — Generated, saved, managed, budgeted
• Percentages — Increased, decreased, improved by X%
• Time — Reduced from X to Y, saved X hours/week
• People — Team size, customers served, users impacted
• Volume — Transactions processed, reports created, tickets resolved
• Scope — Number of projects, clients, accounts, locations

Examples by Industry

Sales

• "Closed $2.3M in new business, exceeding annual quota by 145%"
• "Expanded client base from 40 to 120 accounts in 18 months"
• "Maintained a 95% client retention rate across a $5M portfolio"

Marketing

• "Grew organic traffic from 15K to 85K monthly visitors through SEO strategy"
• "Reduced cost per acquisition from $45 to $18 through campaign optimization"
• "Managed $500K annual advertising budget across 4 channels"

Engineering

• "Reduced page load time from 4.2s to 0.8s, improving conversion rate by 23%"
• "Built microservices architecture handling 2M+ daily API requests"
• "Eliminated 15 hours/week of manual processes through automation"

Healthcare

• "Managed patient caseload of 25+ per shift in Level 1 trauma center"
• "Achieved 98% patient satisfaction score across 500+ interactions"
• "Reduced medication errors by 60% through new verification protocol"

Education

• "Improved standardized test scores by 22% across 150 students"
• "Designed curriculum adopted by 3 departments serving 800+ students"
• "Increased parent engagement by 40% through new communication platform"

"But My Job Doesn't Have Numbers"

Yes it does. Here's how to find them:

• How many? — People on your team, customers you serve, reports you create
• How often? — Daily, weekly, monthly frequency
• How much? — Budget, revenue, costs
• How fast? — Time to completion, turnaround time
• Compared to what? — Better than last year, better than average, better than target

If you truly can't find exact numbers, use ranges or approximations: "~50 clients," "100+ reports monthly," "team of 5-8." Approximate numbers are far better than no numbers.

The CARL Method

Challenge — What was the problem?
Action — What did you do?
Result — What happened (with numbers)?
Learning — What did it prove about you?

You don't need all four in every bullet, but the Result (with a number) is non-negotiable.