In the long run, a people is known, not by its statements and statistics, but by the stories it tells—Flannery O’Conner inChristian Science Monitor.

In the thick of this Presidential political season we are bombarded by message from candidates who are trying to sell us their candidacy. In almost all cases their preferred message is to wow the voters by telling them (promises) what they are going to do if they get into the office.

The same happens when people are after the jobs they are seeking where they are required to submit résumés in alignment with the job descriptions for positions they are seeking. Most such job descriptions have requirements or statements that reflect on the candidate’s skills in specific areas such as teamwork, influencing, creativity, communication, management abilities, organization, and ability to manage details.

In response to such requirements the résumé statements job-seekers typically make are mostly in the form of “trust me, I know how to do that” format. This short blog is about learning how to present your message in a different way that is more impactful, credible, and easy to relate to for each of such requirements. I am going to do this with examples (I am going to show you) instead of telling you how to do this in your résumé and other messages.

Example #1

Tel

Excellent communicator, in both written and oral forms with strong command of the language.

Show
• Managed a project leading a team of 25 across four countries, and despite the project’s complexity and duration (22 months) kept all aspects of this project on track through teamwork, communication, and leadership. The final release was achieved three weeks ahead of schedule.
• Conceived of a new business idea to extend the current languishing product into a new area of application and developed a one-page proposal making a business case for it. When new app was launched revenues doubled and profits tripled in Y-1 alone.

Example#2

Tell

Unsurpassed ability to influence different interests to bring them together for common purpose

Show

When a new product was constantly getting delayed because different stakeholders not agreeing on what features to launch in the first version, quickly summarized in-depth discovery conducted with loyal customers and translated that into a prioritized features list. Everyone quickly converged on that list and the product was launched in the ensuing two months with great market traction.

Example #3

Tell

Great attention to detail without losing sight of the main objective

Show

When the new chip design went through verification testing thousands of bugs surfaced, which scuttled the prospect of the initial release date. Took charge and went through each of the bugs and eliminated all of them, one-by-one, still meeting the initial release date.

These are just some examples of how you can develop a credible message that will immediately wow its reader than merely Telling them through empty statements such as the ones made here in the Tell part of the blog.

So, the next time you are ready to write your résumé or Summary on LinkedIn fortify any claims you make about yourself by Showing them and see how well that works for you!

Good luck!