Your Contribution: Adding Value To Your New Employer

Your contribution to the organisation's performance is the key factor in you being chosen for a new job by a new employer.

Because employers are looking for someone who can add value to their organization, the way they quantify it is by considering how you contributed to your previous employer's business.

What you must recognize is that employers want people who can make a contribution - add value, to the organization's bottom line, so if you can describe it in definite terms then your case becomes much stronger.

You need to be able to demonstrate to the hiring manager how you will be adding value rather than just being a cost center.

Your specific contribution is best demonstrated by the key skills and personal strengths you identify on your CV, especially if you then align your achievements to show how effectively you did your job. Think of the key strengths section on your CV:

Key Skills

• Providing leadership with strong planning and organising skills, teamwork and customer focus skills to support the delivery of continuous improvement for customers; creating a high quality shopping experience.
• Instigating efficient plans, using experience, analysis and judgement to make decisions and get things done by showing personal integrity, drive, team working, developing self and others, managing performance, and gaining commitment.
• Working exceptionally well on both my own initiative to lead a team whilst having proven and demonstrable team skills with a confident, diplomatic and tenacious approach.
• Coaching team to meet the high standards of safety and service customers expect in an environmentally sound way; ensuring legal compliance.
• P & L Reporting, budget and financial planning, analysing sales figures and forecasting future sales volumes to maximise profits. Very good at working with lean budgets and setting clear business objectives to deliver results.
• Good IT Skills: MS Office, Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Internet Explorer.

Another way of defining your contribution is to think about your key achievements in the same way as for your CV. Include:

Key achievements:

• Refocused the project within 2 months from IT project into sales & marketing project, resulting in creating the right level of attention with senior management
• Re-structured the processes of the project for country implementation
• Identified the change management issues in the countries and created processes to deal with them
• Achieved 100% take up of process within 6 months

Some examples of adding value to organizational goals:

Your contribution might come from any of these areas:

Commercial performance

Improve profits through increased sales and better cost control. Build sustainable relationships with customers to maximise the lifetime value. Marketing and selling

Attract new customers and retain existing ones by ensuring excellent customer service. Developing new routes to market and meet clients changing needs.

Productivity

Increase productivity by introducing improvements to working methods. Includes new designs of existing processes or equipment.

Developing People

Enhance the performance of your team through development tasks, continuous learning and training. Mentor and coach your team members.

Financial resources and controls

Reduce costs by streamlining procedures, keeping better records and cutting back on waste.

Intellectual property

Ensure that patents and copyrights are protected. Identify ways to exploit the potential of new ideas.

Innovation

Generate or encourage ideas for new products, services and markets through managing a project team. Introduce new approaches, such as digital media or social networking for greater awareness.

Human resources

Your contribution may be to motivate staff to perform to high standards; or to act as business partner to line management.

Social Responsibility

Help make the workplace safe by setting an example for meeting health and safety standards. Also includes Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by recognising environmental issues.

Strategic information

Manage access to information on all aspects of the organization's activities. Maintain knowledge communication and updating. Introduce new approaches, such as digital media or social networking for greater awareness amongst the community.

Work out some stories about any of the above areas that you have been involved with; don't be shy, show off your talents and abilities and put yourself 'center-stage' so that your future contribution can be better evaluated.

In what other ways can you define how you contribute to the organization? Be specific and quantify your achievements exactly to show where you are adding value whenever possible.

Now that you see why your contribution is the key factor in being chosen for a new position by a new employer, you must show how you can add value to their organization. The way they quantify it is by taking note of how you contributed to your previous employer's business.

This depends on being able to recall and recollect your own personal achievements, so you must now focus on your true value and define what you are bringing, remembering that organizations are always most interested in those new employees who can define their contribution or show themselves adding value in a specific way.

Because if you have done it before there's a good chance you can do it again.

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