I hope that you have enjoyed the article “4 Words Your Supply Chain Resume Needs.”

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Sometimes, I write a PurchTips article and, immediately after it gets emailed to our 220,000+ members, I thought of something I would have liked to add to it. Such was the case with this article.

But thank God for this blog!

Here’s what I wanted to add…When you use those four words mentioned in the article – saved, increased, reduced, and improved- you need to follow those words with an answer to the question “How much?” or “By how much?”

For example, if you improved the productivity of a department, it’s not enough to say “Improved the productivity of my department.” You should say “Improved the productivity of my department by 12%.”

In most cases, it is best to list monetary amounts (in Dollars, Euros, or whatever currency you use). However, I recall a purchasing class that I took quite early in my career and an incident that happened that made me realize that it may not be appropriate to list monetary amounts in all situations. Another student was talking to the instructor about rewriting his resume and thought that he could get any job he wanted because he saved his employer $19,000.

The instructor, who worked for a large, Fortune 500 company, said “Uh, that’s not really a lot of money.” This statement shocked my fellow student, who thought he was worthy of induction into the procurement hall of fame.

While a $19,000 cost savings is nothing to sneeze at, the instructor’s point was well-taken: if you’ve worked for a small company and are applying to work at a big company, you have to take the employer’s perspective into consideration. The lesson here is that, in these cases, it may be best to express your achievement in terms of percentages rather than currency.

Having situational awareness is never a bad thing. Especially when you are trying to secure a new purchasing job.