Your Procurement Resume Needs To Have More of These Four Words

I hope that you have enjoyed the latest Next Level Purchasing Association article “Is Your Procurement Resume All Wrong?”

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In the article, I gave some examples of traditional procurement resume excerpts that listed responsibilities. Then, I gave examples of something that is more effective than mere responsibilities: results. In this post, I will continue to illustrate the differences between responsibilities and results.

For example, “Managed a 12-employee procurement team” is a responsibility. “Increased the procurement team’s productivity by 15%” is a result.

“Was responsible for customer satisfaction levels” is a responsibility. “Improved customer satisfaction from a 3.1/5 average to a 4.3/5 average” is a result.

“Transformed purchase-to-pay process” is a responsibility. “Reduced average invoice backlog from 32 days to 3 days through transforming the purchase-to-pay process” is a result.

“Negotiated contracts for information technology purchases” is a responsibility. “Saved the company $13 million through negotiation of information technology purchase contracts.”

There are four key words I’ve used in these examples: saved, increased, reduced, and improved. These are results-oriented words that should be the focus of your procurement resume. You should use these words as often as possible because they indicate what you achieved, not merely what you did.

I’ll close this post with some more examples of “what I did” words. Scour your procurement resume and see if you can replace sentences using these words with sentences that leverage the power of “saved,” “increased,” “reduced,” or “improved.”

• Administered
• Assigned
• Assisted
• Awarded
• Bought
• Completed
• Consulted
• Coordinated
• Developed
• Implemented
• Led
• Managed
• Negotiated
• Procured
• Purchased
• Served
• Sourced
• Supervised
• Supported
• Transformed
• Traveled
• Worked

This list is not exhaustive, but I hope you get the point. And I hope that you can use these tips to measurably “improve” your procurement resume!