Tips for Recording Your Executive Success at Work

If you are a senior executive with an office in the C-suite, then you might find measuring your successes to be difficult. Likely, you are not performing every single task for which your division has oversight. You might have 10 or 20 or 100 people reporting to you and working on various aspects of widely distributed and complex projects. If you can break the projects your team is completing down into major sections, then you can explain in several formats how your leadership directly affects the project success and its effects on your company's bottom line.

How to Keep an Accurate Record of Your Work History

There are several key ways you can keep records of your success as a CEO, CTO, or CMO. First, you need the right tools, but, luckily, you can track your own successes with simple software you probably already have, including spreadsheets, word processing, and scanning.

In a Spreadsheet

Your project managers probably already have delivered to you project milestones and timelines. If you can input these into a spreadsheet you can also mark your own successes and leadership contributions to each project. Place a milestone list down the left hand side, and put headers across the top such as "team members," "budget," "key obstacles," "solutions developed," "deliverables," and any other measurables you believe are relevant to your company's growth. The more you can provide calculable, quantifiable results, with dollars earned, dollars saved, percentages of increase or decrease of keep metrics, and any other key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter most to your company, the better prepared you will be to report on your successes when the time comes for your own performance to be evaluated.

In a Word Processing File

Sometimes, as an executive, the successes you need to record for yourself are best maintained in a word processing document. You can treat these personal files as narratives of your ongoing successes. Remember to record the elements of each project that you found easy, the ones you found challenging, and the specific strategies you employed to make sure that each project was a success. It might be worth your while to keep copies of these files on your personal home computer rather than your work professional computer, so that you can be honest with yourself and maintain records that are accurate from a professional standpoint as well as a psychological one.

In Scans of Documents

Files you may have access to only once or twice per year include your evaluations by your board or your executive team. It is worth your while to keep copies of these records somewhere you can access them easily and quickly. Your annual or semiannual review documents are examples of these. You can scan these and easily, and you will have exact copies of the types of comments your superiors are making about your work performance. Similarly, it makes sense to keep electronic scanned copies of any letters you get from your customers, vendors, or professional associates. Often, what people say about you carries more weight than what you can say about yourself.

Career Coaches Recommend Using These Records of Your Successes for Preparation of Your Executive Resume and Executive Biography

The point of keeping these records is twofold. First you will need to know for yourself or your successes in your work has been when your annual review comes around. You want to report to your executive board or your superiors on the types of leadership that you have delivered. Also, when you are seeking a transfer or promotion or a new executive position with another company, it helps to have these data points at your fingertips. Your executive resume writer and executive career coach will need to know these types of information to better guide the creation of your career portfolio. In addition, these successes form the meat of the types of answers you will have to give during the interviews in which you will be required to participate as you seek new executive positions. Having the record of your work successes at your fingertips when this time comes, will make the process much easier and much more comfortable for you, because you will already be accustomed to speaking about these types of executive accomplishments.

Amy L. Adler, MBA, MA, CARW, CEO of Five Strengths Career Transition Experts. Call (801) 810-JOBS for your professional resume. Career coaching service also available.

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