Many of us have been taught to be humble and to not speak too highly of ourselves, but on a resume you have to brag a little bit in order to get noticed by employers. So how do you work against your modest instincts to promote yourself effectively to employers while remaining accurate and grounded?

Start with what other people say.

A good way to decide what you’re going to say about yourself is to look carefully at what others say about working with you. Solicit praise from your coworkers and review what they say. Pay attention to any similarities in what they choose to talk about. Do a lot of people describe you as “hard-working” and “focused”? Perhaps those are descriptors you should use in your resume. This is especially helpful if you plan to use any of these coworkers as references, as their positive statements about you will be consistent with your resume, which employers will look upon favorably.

Carefully consider your skills.

Many people underestimate how much self-reflection is required when you try to accurately represent yourself on a piece of paper. The most important part of trying to represent yourself well in a resume is to have a set of skills you can promote with absolute confidence. This doesn’t mean you have to have a full grasp of the skills themselves, but you should know what level of understanding you have of these skills and how you previously applied them.

Take a piece of paper and write out all the skills you think apply to you. Once you have that list, go through it and classify your skills into three groups, from the skills you consider to be your strongest, to least strong. When you add your skills to your resume, order them from your strongest group to least strong. By carefully considering your skills and your level of competence in each one, you’ll be prepared to discuss these skills in a sincere and composed manner by the time your interview rolls around.

Cultivate your resume’s personality.

You may think it’s best simply use skills and experience to tell your story, but employers want to know about you. Take some time to reflect on your accomplishments and past experiences. What personality traits contributed to your success? If you would characterize yourself as resourceful, how has this helped you? Choose some character defining words that represent you the best and add them to your resume.

Behind each one, you should be able to connect these traits to an instance of success or pride in your career. This both gives employers a sense of how you’ll go about contributing to their mission and it gives you more direction for your interview. In an interview, you will be able to more directly connect instances of career success to positive personality traits. Maybe your patience lead to increased success in customer service, or perhaps your flexibility meant you were able to quickly adapt to a rapidly changing work environment. Whatever your traits are, discover and promote them!

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