🥊 How do I show my IMPACT?

Author

Vincent Xu
November 10, 2024

TalentGeist Newsletter

Immediately-actionable career insights for ambitious individuals.

Read time: 10 minutes

First of all — welcome to the 50+ of you who joined since last week! 🥳 Be sure to check out some of our previous insights here :).

For today’s topic — a bit of context first.

To maximise your career potential (whether it’s landing a new job or excelling on your current job) — you MUST become an expert in framing the impact, or outcome, of your accomplishments.

❌ I built a strategy deck for XX product.

❌ I ran a marketing campaign to drive product X adoption.

❌ I implemented an internal tool to save the organisation on costs.

All of the above are just saying “I did my job” (the bare minimum), without clarifying how well you did the job, especially relative to peers. Why should you be the 1 in 1,000 that wins the job offer? Or the 1 in 10 that earns the promotion this cycle?

Here’s a quick example of impact framing, from worst to best.

❌ Worst — Implemented all software updates for Company X.

🆗 Better — Implemented 300+ software updates for Company X, achieving failure rate below 1%.

✅ Best — Implemented 300+ software updates for Company X, achieving failure rate below 1% (vs. average ~10% by peers).

”Okay….this is nice and all….but personally, I don’t have any impact numbers” 😖😩😥

The above is literally THE most common thing we hear from our fellows :). Of course, it’s not easy — or else everyone will be landing interviews at Google and/or getting promoted. However, in 90%+ of cases when our fellows lament this, we sit down with them and come up with a new, ‘10X’ write-up. We use the 2-step structure below.

  • Step 1 — Be crystal clear on WHY you had to take on the project. What business metric was it meant to move? This could be time savings, cost savings, revenue boost, user growth, user retention, ROI, etc.

  • Step 2 — HOW MUCH did you move the metrics? If the numbers are not clear (most cases), use ‘smart estimates’ or ‘projections’.

Below are a few real-life examples from our fellows (redacted for anonymity).

1️⃣ Example 1 — “I launched a new product/feature”

❌ Original write-up: Implemented software migration from landlines to smartphone for Ministry of Manpower updates.

🤔 Reframed thinking:

  • Step 1 — why did Ministry of Manpower push the migration in the first place? Aha! Time savings (landlines = need to call every person individually & follow up to ensure receipt, vs. smartphones = digital updates with ability to auto-confirm receipt). Also, cost savings (no more call centers needed).

  • Step 2 — quantify how you moved the metrics, using ‘smart estimates.’

    • Time savings: landlines = on average, 4-5 calls needed to get hold of someone (~10 minutes), vs. smartphones = ~1 minute to send / follow-up on digital updates. Thus, ~90% time savings!

    • Cost savings: no more call centers = ~$5M saved annually, based on 100+ call center staff + real-estate costs. **Nobody is expecting you to have the perfect answer/number off the top of your head; as long as your numbers are LOGICALLY-DERIVED, it’s all good.

✅ New write-up: Spearheaded the migration from landlines to Smartphone for Ministry of Manpower updates, reducing time needed per update by ~90% (10 minutes to under 1-minute). Sunsetted the need for a call center, resulting in annual cost savings of ~$5M.

💡Again, it’s PERFECTLY OKAY to make logical assumptions like the ones in the example above. You will rarely have perfect information. The reader (e.g., recruiter, hiring manager, manager promoting you) want to see that you at least tried to quantify your impact. As long as you can walk them through your logical/methodical thinking, your impact will be 100% accepted…..and help you stand out.

2️⃣ Example 2 — “I made internal processes better”

❌ Original write-up: Launched an automation tool to assist in data pulls for the Product Operations team.

🤔 Reframed thinking:

  • Step 1 — what’s the purpose of the automation tool? Aha! Time savings (to ‘automate’ data pulls that previously were manual), and by extension, cost savings (no more salaried-time wasted on the manual data pull).

    Step 2 — quantify how you moved the metrics, using ‘smart estimates.’

    • Time savings: our fellow tested the tool herself and found it saved ~10 minutes a week. She knows the tool is scaled to the entire Product Operations team (~1,000 employees). Therefore, she saved the org 10 × 1,000 = 10,000 minutes weekly, or ~9,000 hours annually!

    • Cost savings: 9,000 hours saved annually * average salaries of ~$150 per hour at MNCs = ~$1.4M saved annually for the org.

✅ New write-up: Launched first-of-its-kind tool to automate data pulls, used by 1,000+ employees across the Product Operations team; resulted in ~9,000 worker-hours saved annually (~$1.4M in salary cost savings).

3️⃣ Example 3 — “I’m the strategy whiz”

❌ Original write-up: Conducted strategic study on Google Photos to boost revenue.

🤔 Reframed thinking:

  • Step 1 — what’s the purpose of the strategic study? To boost Google Photos revenue (as is already mentioned in the original write-up).

  • Step 2 — quantify how you moved the metrics, using ‘projections.’

    • Revenue boost: since it’s just a strategy, there’s no execution yet. Thus, to quantify the impact, rely on projections; i.e., based on your analysis, how much more revenue is the org expected to see if they implemented your strategy?

✅ New write-up: Launched 3-months strategic study to boost Google Photos revenue via new APAC-wide referral programs, partnerships with mega-enterprises (e.g., Mastercard), and more; projected to drive incremental 14% increase in annual revenue (+$35M), the highest expected revenue jump in Google Photos history.

The natural instinct many of you will have at this point is “good read….but I still don’t have quantifiable numbers that work in my case” (we’ve conducted hundreds of 1-on-1’s for our fellows, so we’ve heard this many times before 😂).

But we are CONFIDENT that you can apply these insights to your bespoke situation.

Grab a cup of coffee, sit down, and think through each of the above examples and where in your own experiences they might apply. If you’re still having trouble after putting in the time — no stress; reply to me on this thread, and I’ll help you out.

We have literally hundreds more examples from our 1-on-1’s with past fellows; if there’s enough interest from readers, we’ll share more examples / dissections in the future.

🙏 10-second favor — if this or previous insights resonated with you, I’d highly appreciate you sharing the signup link with 2-3 colleagues/friends — they’ll thank YOU for sharing, and you’ll win some brownie points with them #networking 😊.

Until next time,

Vincent (LinkedIn)

***Other ways we help you land your dream job —

  • Tested-and-proven resume templates — see here.

  • Courses to nail your resume + interviews — see here.

  • Highly-customized 1-on-1’s (our 2024 fellows landed offers at Google, Amazon, Meta, Bytedance, LinkedIn, and dozens more) — we’re currently at-capacity, but reply to me here if you’d like to be placed on the waitlist.