Latest / The Resume Room with Fexingo: Resume Writing, Cover Letters, and Application Strategy / How to Explain a Job With Unclear Performance Metrics
Transcript
- Lucas: So you've got a job where your boss never really defined what success looked like. No KPIs, no quarterly targets, nothing. And now you're staring at a blank section on your resume thinking, how do I prove I was any good at this? Luna: That's the exact wall I hit with my last role. I was doing a bit of everything, and my 'performance review' was basically a chat over coffee. Lucas: And that's more common than people think. Not every job comes with a dashboard. But the resume still needs to show impact. So today we're going to give you a practical way to find the numbers that exist even when nobody handed you a metric. Luna: Okay, but how do you start? I mean, if there's no data anywhere, where do you even dig? Lucas: First, you stop looking for the official numbers and start looking for the work itself. Think about a typical week. What did you actually spend your time on? Not your job description, but the real tasks. That's your raw material. Luna: Right, so instead of 'responsible for social media,' you look at the actual posts you wrote and think, how many people saw them? Lucas: Exactly. And that's the key move: you have to convert activities into outcomes. Even if the company never tracked it, the outcome exists. For example, a marketing coordinator I spoke with used to send the weekly newsletter. No one ever told her the open rate. But she could look back at the platform and see it averaged around 40 percent. Luna: So she gave herself a metric that her employer just never bothered to pull. Lucas: Precisely. And the same goes for customer service, project management, even administrative work. If you scheduled meetings for a team, you can estimate how many hours of executive time you saved. If you processed invoices, you know the volume per week. It's not about fabricating numbers, it's about finding the ones that are already there. Luna: But what if the data is just… not there? Like, I once managed a community forum and there was no analytics at all. How would you handle that? Lucas: Good question. In those cases, you look for proxies. Instead of 'increased engagement,' you say 'created a monthly Q&A thread that consistently generated over fifty comments from active users.' You're not claiming a percentage, you're describing a concrete activity with a tangible result. Luna: So it's less about big numbers and more about showing that you did a thing and it had some kind of measurable consequence. Lucas: Exactly. And if you truly can't attach a number to anything, then you focus on the scope. How many people did you support? How many projects were you juggling? How many vendors did you manage? Scope tells a story even without a metric. Luna: That makes sense. And what about the language on the resume? I always feel like I'm either being too vague or making things up. Lucas: The language matters a lot. Instead of 'helped with' or 'assisted,' you want to use verbs that imply ownership: 'managed,' 'led,' 'built,' 'streamlined.' And then you attach the specific detail. For example, 'Managed the office supply budget' becomes 'Managed a $30,000 annual office supply budget, negotiating contracts that reduced costs by 10 percent.' Luna: Now that's a bullet point that actually tells me something. And it's not even a complicated number to find. Lucas: Right. The budget was probably in a spreadsheet somewhere. The negotiation outcome, that's a little detective work. But it's the kind of digging that pays off, because that's the specificity that gets you interviews. Luna: What about the interview? If you've fudged a little on the resume, and they ask you to walk through your metric, you're going to trip up. Lucas: We never want to fudge. The goal is to present estimates honestly. When you're in an interview and they ask about your numbers, you say something like, 'We didn't have a formal metric, but based on the data available, I tracked that we averaged about fifty tickets a week.' That's transparent, and it shows you took initiative to measure your own work. Luna: That's a good way to frame it. And it also shows you're results-oriented even when the system isn't. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're worried that your estimates are too soft, you can layer in qualitative evidence. Did you get praised in a review? Win an internal award? Get tapped for a special project? Those are signals of performance that don't rely on numbers. Luna: So let's recap. You start with your actual tasks, you look for any underlying data, you use scope as a proxy, and you write it up with strong verbs and honest specifics. Lucas: You got it. And before we go further, if this is the kind of advice that's helping you think through your own resume, this show stays ad-free thanks to listener support. If you found today useful, you can buy us a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small way to keep these episodes coming. Luna: Yeah, and even a small contribution helps us keep the lights on and the mics warm. But no pressure — we're just glad you're here. Lucas: So, back to the resume. One more thing to keep in mind: the format. If you've got a mix of quantified and unquantified achievements, you don't need to force a number into every bullet. It's okay to have some bullets that describe a responsibility and others that show impact. Luna: So you're saying the all-number approach isn't necessarily the goal. Lucas: Right. The goal is to show you made a difference. And you can do that with a mix of hard numbers and specific examples. The worst thing you can do is leave the resume generic because you couldn't find a metric. Luna: That's a great note to end on. I think we've given everyone something to work with. Lucas: So next time you're updating your resume and you hit that wall, remember: the numbers are often hiding in plain sight. You just have to look a little harder. Luna: And if you do, you might be surprised what you find.