How to Develop CAR Stories For Your Resume?

What is CAR?

Most of us know that CAR is an acronym for Challenge, Action and Results. It's like FAB: Features, Advantages and Benefits of a product.

Features are different characteristics of a product like size, color, price, shape etc. Advantages come out of the features, and benefits are the result of advantages, e.g. "the king size (feature) will bring you additional profits (benefit) because it is the fastest growing (advantage) and more economical size (feature)". People are interested in what the product will do for them. People want advantages but buy benefits.

Now think of yourself as a product and try to market it to a customer, the prospective employer. Wait, before you start are you clear on the objective of your marketing campaign and what tools are you going to use?

Your Marketing Campaign and Tools

The objective of your marketing campaign is to get the interview, and the tools are your cover letter and resume. Remember the purpose of your cover letter is to persuade the reader to read your resume and the purpose of your resume is to persuade the reader to call you for an interview.

If you can meet the needs of your prospective employer by showing the relevant benefits and the required skills the chances are they will call you for an interview.

Needs of Your Customer

You already know the needs of your customer. How? Yes, you guessed it right, through the Job Description. That job description gives you the 'Key Words'; the words on which you need to develop your CAR Stories. You can also identify generic keywords for your kind of job.

How to Develop A CAR Story?

Identify all the key words in the Job Description, write each one on a separate sheet of paper as a title, along with the name of the company, your position and dates, and start developing your CAR story.

Challenge: Write down what was the challenge, problem or situation for that keyword. Actions: What actions you took to realize the challenge, solve the problem or improve the situation. Results: Quantify your results where possible in terms of percentages or figures, show increases or decreases.

Once you are through, summarize the story in two or three lines, reverse the sequence i.e. write the results first followed by Actions and omit challenges as they are already implied in your actions. This summarized version is what you need to write in your resume as and where appropriate.