Whether during an interview or on your resume, describing your current job duties can be difficult. But knowing how to illustrate your latest experience gives you an edge over the competition and helps you impress the hiring manager. Our guide below will give you expert tips for describing your duties on your resume and during the interview process.
Reframe Your Duties as Achievements
Simply outlining your daily tasks won’t help you stand out from a crowded pool of applicants. Instead, spell out how your success at those duties created value for the company. For example, if you support sales operations, you could describe how your actions played a key role in the company achieving its revenue goals.
How To Describe Current Duties on Your Resume
In general, display duties on your resume using bullet points, as this format is easy for hiring managers to read quickly. Keep your bullet-point text no longer than two or three lines. Otherwise, you risk creating a wall of text that will make your accomplishments hard to evaluate. Ensure each bullet point begins by citing a daily duty or project and ends by showcasing the result or wider benefit of your work.
Example
- Engaged with clients and promoted custom products, generating $200,000 in revenue
How To Describe Your Current Duties During an Interview
Describing your tasks during the interview can be stressful. To boost your confidence, consider preparing some statements in advance. But don’t rehearse these statements as though you’re reading from a teleprompter. This should be a fluid conversation where you and the hiring manager leave with positive takeaways. Keep these statements in the back of your mind so you have ideas to strengthen your response.
Example 1
Question
Tell me about a problem you solved at your most recent job. What steps did you take to overcome that challenge?
Response
During my current position as a project manager at Enterprise Software Corp, I played a key role in helping our PMO resolve project delays that were hurting our long-term client relationships. As our client base grew, we tried to maintain our Agile approach despite the challenge of constantly pivoting our priorities with numerous customer projects. I led an initiative to grow our project management organization and integrate a hybrid Agile-Waterfall approach, which saved three at-risk accounts valued at over $2 million and helped us expand our delivery of services to secure five new enterprise clients.
Analysis
This answer works well because it explains the candidate’s responsibility for daily project management functions and calls out their ability to improve how an organization serves high-value customers. It shows the job seeker has experience solving complex problems to ensure operations run smoothly and clients are satisfied.
Example 2
Question
Tell me about your day-to-day job responsibilities. How do you optimize daily operations? How do you drive efficiency for your current company?
Response
As a customer service manager, I manage a large team of over 30 customer representatives at a high-volume call center. In addition to managing escalated tickets, I’m responsible for achieving monthly customer satisfaction goals. When I notice my team members struggling to solve a particular issue, I document the appropriate solution and deliver remedial training. By standardizing our responses and alerting management to trends in customer calls, we’ve reduced average call times by over 35 seconds.
Analysis
This response gives the hiring manager a clear understanding of the candidate’s daily workflow. It also demonstrates how they can work with direct reports to make daily operations run faster.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I describe my current duties on my resume using past or present tense?-
At first glance, the present tense is the obvious choice, as you’re still actively performing these duties. But one of the benefits of using the past tense is that bullet points are sometimes read more proactively and support the end goal of crafting an achievement-driven document. This approach also prevents a shift in verb tense partway through the job description, which can confuse the reader. Ultimately, this comes down to personal preference, and if the content is well written, your career achievements will grab the hiring manager’s attention.
How do I reframe standard job duties as achievements? -
There are various ways to spell out the result or benefit of each duty, whether or not you have performance data available. Just remember the acronym POWER and write about what you’ve:
- Produced (created, generated, introduced…) Example: Introduced accounting best practices that decreased company financial errors by 10% in five years
- Overcome (averted, defeated…) Example: Identified and averted over $250,000 in lost revenue from bank errors
- Won (acquired, garnered…) Example: Won “Accounting Expert of the Month” five times for outstanding diligence and accuracy
- Enhanced (improved, strengthened…) Example: Enhanced client relationships by actively addressing and resolving late payments
- Ranked (rated, designated…) Example: Ranked No. 3 out of 15 team members for both efficiency and accuracy
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