Of course, it would be absurd to try to quantify every single one of your tasks or accomplishments. Still, at the very least, you can be qualitatively specific. For example, instead of simply saying, "I'm multilingual," you could say, "I am ?uent in French, Spanish, and Chinese." Or, instead of saying that your artwork has been shown in "many galleries," you might say that your work has been shown in "galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Denver, and New York."
Other statements that do not need to be quantified to convey the weight of accomplishment would be the following:
• I won an award for being the employee of the year.
• I'm president of the Society for Historical Research.
• I graduated with highest honors.
• My customers have described me as dependable, honest, and fair.
• My last boss would describe me as dynamic, innovative, and creative.
• I created a new curriculum for self-esteem in secondary
schools.
• I invented a new type of kitchen sponge.
Let's Get Specific
We'll talk more about qualitative statements later in this chapter, but for now we'll stick with learning more about Q statements. Now that you've read quite a few Q statements, let's move on to creating some of your own. It's time to look back at the list of your general skills in Chapter 2. Let's say "organize" is at the topof your list. An unspecific statement might look like this:
I am very organized.
A more specific statement would look like this:
I organized meetings for top international executives in New
York, Washington, D.C., and Hong Kong.
The quantified version of this statement would look like this:
I organized up to 40 meetings a week for over 15 international
executives in New York, Washington, D.C., and Hong Kong.
Please note your ideas on the next few pages.
Skill 1 .. 6_____________________________________(name of skill)
Q statement:
Q statement:
Q statement:
Great! You now have some powerful statements to use as real-life examples of how you can contribute to the bottom-line profits of a company. You can prove to the interviewer that you can produce results—because if you have done it once, it's a good bet that you can do it again.
Q Statements for Job-Specific Skills
Now that you've made your general skills "leap off the page," I'd like you to do the same for your job-specific skills. If you can't quantify them, try just thinking of an example, story, or situation
in which you used the skill.
Please use the worksheet that follows to keep a record of your examples:
Skill 1 .. 6_____________________________________(name of skill)
Q statement:
Q statement:
Q statement:
Q Statements for Personal Traits
After taking a breather from all of those incredible accomplishments, let's take a look at some of the more intangible qualities you bring to the interview—your personal traits. There are specific ways to make these skills come alive in the eyes of the employer too.
Let's say that one of your personal traits is that you're
dependable. That's an important attribute, but it's difficult to quantify. However, you may have an anecdote or short story that demonstrates that you are dependable. To express the quality of dependability, you might say something like this:
I'm very dependable. Every time the boss left the plant to go out on business, he left the operations of the plant and responsibility for the crew up to me.
You might also say:
I'm very dependable. In 2 years of working for this company, I
haven't once been late for an appointment with a customer.
As is true when talking about your general skills, it's not wise to make a claim about your personal traits without having some evidence to support it. Try to find at least one story, fact, example, or anecdote that proves you have that trait.
Please return to your skills summary page in Chapter 2, and find the list of your three to four personal traits. Write at least one example of when you demonstrated that trait or used that skill. Use the following pages to keep a record.
Skill 1 .. 3_____________________________________(name of trait)
Q statement:
Q statement:
Q statement: