Writing High Impact Statements
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When you develop these statements, you will identify specific skills, traits, and values that
will strengthen your resume. Elaborating upon these statements in an interview or at an
informational meeting will help you to present your value to a potential employer.
Build a list of as many of your high impact statements as you can. This will help you to tailor
your resume to a particular job that interests you. Identifying and writing out your
accomplishments also helps you see what differentiates you.
Writing a high impact statement begins with you identifying the Problem, Action, and
Results (PAR) for each one of your work experiences.
1. P= the problem that you helped the organization solve
2. A= the actions you took to solve the problem
3. R= the outcome of your efforts
Begin by identifying your accomplishments, outline 10 to 20 incidents, situations, or projects
in which you did something that gave your career (or life) meaning:
• What made you feel good about yourself or others feel good about you?
• What awards, promotions, bonuses, or other forms of recognition did you receive?
Why?
• How did you efficiently manage others?
• In what decision making or planning did you participate?
• What problems did you identify and solve?
• What new program, product or system did you introduce?
• How did you save the company money or time? How much?
You may choose to focus on accomplishments outside your current employment, but which
relate to your new career objectives. Clearly identify the specific things you did or actions
that you took:
• Summarize the situation, incident, or project in one sentence.
• What actions did you take? With whom did you interact? Was this your idea? Did
you identify a problem and/or recommend a solution? Did you have to persuade
anyone to participate or cooperate with you?
• What were the results of these actions? How were they successful? Who benefited
from them? Quantify the benefits.
• Remember that most of what we do at work can be categorized in one of four ways:
Making Money Saving Money Increasing Efficiency Serving Customers
Reference this bullet list to create high impact statements, beginning each statement with a
powerful verb that refers specifically to a result. Quantify your results using numbers (1,2,3),
percentages (%), and dollar signs ($). Avoid using adverbs (“effectively” or “significantly”).
Numbers speak louder than adjectives.
Writing High Impact Statements
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High Impact Statement Example:
Problem
Organization call center had experienced increased customer complaints since releasing the
second generation of its flagship product. Complaints focused on customer knowledge of product
functionality and call center response time to address issues.
Action
• Collaborated with product marketing to develop an online customer user interface with
instructions more clearly showing how to access features.
• Established a customer call center process to provide added training support to customers
and resolve allow call center to resolve user issues real-time.
Result
Decreased customer complaints significantly within first 30 days of program rollout. Returned
customer satisfaction ratings to pre-product release levels.
Resulting Accomplishment Statement on Resume
Implemented product training program in collaboration with product marketing and customer
support to provide real-time support on product functionality, improved call center issue
resolution time by 60%.
