3 Questions to Ask When Planning Your First Business Resume: Promote results to get a job faster.

Once again this week, a major job market story is a continued effort of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, to massively downsize the federal government. Reportedly, 40,000 or more federal employees have already accepted a “buyout” offer that would take them off the books when the federal fiscal year ends on September 30, 2025. Additionally, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has apparently been cut from more than 10,000 employees to less than 300, or a staff reduction of about 97%! And this does not include contractors that were supporting USAID projects around the world.

 Both decisions face court challenges. Nonetheless thousands of federal workers and contractor employees will probably lose their jobs and others may decide they do not want to work in this environment. Job losses could go well beyond the beltway as policymakers act to cut back education funding and even funds for medical research.

So, if you are sitting in a federal office now, or know someone who is sitting in a government office that may disappear, what steps should you or the employees you know take right now?

While you are still sitting in your office, take stock of everything you have accomplished as a federal employee. Think about each of your work assignments and ask yourself:

1. What were you asked to do?
2. What did you do?
3. What results did you achieve?

As a career federal employee, or worker at a government contractor, you may feel that you just followed a process and did not achieve much. When I described my federal work to friends and family, I told them that I “went to meetings, wrote memos, and crunched numbers.” Yet, some of the issues I researched and wrote about are still in the news. Occasionally, I see quotes from reports I worked on more than 30 years ago. So, as a relatively junior career staff member in a field location, I may have had an impact.

When you follow the steps below, you’ll also find that you made an impact, even if your work did not “make the papers.”

What were you asked to do?

You were hired to address specific organizational needs. Often, your leadership team or immediate supervisor sets goals for certain periods of time. Even better, you probably got this information in some document you have access to and had to sign.

Use the goals your team leaders gave you as a starting point. For example, at a government contractor I was tasked with making certain that every jobseeker we considered work-ready had a resume. The resume had to meet the requirements of our contract to assist jobseekers, and it had to meet the needs of our job development team—the staff that did job placement. This gave me a starting point when I had to explain my accomplishments to prospective employers and others in the career services industry.

What did you do to meet your goal?

Many of us are modest when potential employers and others ask us what we did to meet expectations at the job. For example a New York City government social worker told me her job had no goal. She just had to certify that client case notes met government requirements so the federal government would pay her agency. That was the purpose of her job and was her goal. Another government social service worker was supposed to handle about 100 cases per week, her actual caseload was 300, so she handled 300% of her goal!

Job search is the process of marketing your skills to prospective employers, so say more than “I did the job.”

What results did you achieve?

The most important thing you can communicate to prospective employers is the result you achieved on your assignments or projects. You will make the strongest case to business employers when you can describe achievements in terms of the amount of money you earned or the amount of money they saved for previous and current employers.

 Frequently, the jobseekers I have worked with can document revenue or budget increases, or cost-savings their work has generated.  But don’t feel stuck if you cannot express your accomplishments in dollars-and-cents. It’s fine to say you were expected to carry a caseload of 100 clients and carried three times that number. And if you have confidential cost-savings figures, you can note the percent of the budget you saved instead of the dollar-figure. Always follow agency or company rules about disclosing information.

Those readers that have read my posts in the past probably recognize the process I am describing. It is the problem, action result model for resume writing.

Remember that your government job was not “pointless.” Compare your job description to what you did. You will almost always find achievements to promote during your job search!

What if you are not downsized?

The accomplishment information you gather is invaluable whether you are “forked,” “dismantled,” downsized in corporate restructuring, or remain in your job. You can use your record of achievements as part of internal promotion and transfer applications, professional certifications applications, and graduate and professional school applications. This information will ensure that you stand out from those applicants who merely parrot their job description.

If you are downsized, you will have the information you need for resumes, letters, and a LinkedIn profile. Take the time to document your achievements now.