Record Your Achievements

Solution: Keep a Record of all Your Achievements

Track your career history and your work achievements.

A few benefits of doing so are:

• It will help you to know and remember what you have done and where you have been. 
• It can help with internal company reviews
• It will help you get your project management certification (PMP, CPPM, IAPM or equivalent). 
• It can help with building your resume ready for your next promotion or job change.

Make a list of your work:

To start with, make a list of all the companies you have worked at, and the specific projects you worked on in each company.

Once you have that basic list, expand it with the following (and more details if you know them):

• Project title
• Company
• Client
• The industry it was in (e.g. water supply, power generation, defence, education, manufacturing, construction, roads etc).
• A short description of the project
• Your official position title
• The number of people working on the project (this might include people reporting to you, but also contractors, operations staff, key stakeholders who gave input etc)
• The number of people you were in charge of, if any (this helps with proving your capability as a manager of people, your early projects may have you in charge of a small team of a few people (i.e. the project team), but many later include many people in the project team that you are in charge of).
• Project value
• Years the project ran (and possibly the months). If you can, record the start and finish dates of the project, some companies want that specific detail in job applications. 
• Your role start and finish dates. Also note the length of time in weeks or months as well (for ease of use in later job applications).
• Your role in the project (and your responsibilities). Sometimes this may be different to your title (e.g. you may be listed as a project engineer or assistant project manager but you were given full management of the project, if so, note that you were the acting project manager. Or you may be listed as a graduate engineer but because of staff shortages you could be assigned to manage a project. If that means you are listed as the project manager to clients, then certainly record that role).
• Your significant accomplishments (if any were measurable).
• The main roles you held. E.g:
  • Project manager
  • Assistant project manager
  • Risk management
  • Cost controller
  • Scheduler
  • Contractor supervisor
  • Assistant to the construction supervisor
  • Concept designer
  • Design reviewer
  • Workshop facilitator
  • Design manager
  • Site engineer
  • Etc.
• Skills or knowledge you used or gained in the role. Sometimes these are similar to the project role names. E.g:
  • Risk analysis
  • Specific machine experience (e.g. commissioning of certain instruments)
  • Cost control
  • Concept design
  • Project management
  • Instruction of staff
  • Developing manuals
  • Coordination of design
  • Procurement of contractors
  • Development of Gantt charts using Microsoft Project, Primavera etc
  • Use of PM software such as Monday.com, NiftyPM etc
  • Etc.

Example Project:

An example project record might be something like this (I made this as generic as possible):

Project: Valley City Dam Safety Review

Company: World Dam Engineers

Client: Valley City

Industry: Water Supply

Description: 20 Year risk review and redesign check to modern standards

Position title: Project Manager

Staff on project: 14

Staff I was in charge of: 8

Project Value: $900,000

Years: February 2022 – November 2024 (1 year, 9 months)

My involvement: April 2022 – November 2024 (1 year, 7 months)

Accomplishment: Delivered completed project under budget and ahead of schedule

Roles/Tasks:

• Project management
• Cost control
• Design management
• Change management
• Cost estimating
• Stakeholder liaison
• Reporting
• Client contact
• Workshop facilitation

Benefits:

The benefit of all these details is that it makes the following much easier:

• Performance reviews in your company (your internal career development). You can get really specific with examples of your work.
• Building and updating your resume for promotions and jobs at other companies. Quickly knowing the project names, dates, values and roles really helps. It also helps you answer common questions such as “describe a project you worked on where you had to resolve a team conflict”. You will have specific projects you can reference.
• Evidence for certification with organisations such as:
  • PMI (Project Management Institute) for the “Project Management Professional” (PMP).
  • AIPM (Australian Institute of Project Management) for the “Certified Practising Project Manager” (CPPM).
  • IAPM (International Association of Project Managers) for the “Certified Project Manager”.
  • Chartered status with engineering registration organisations (or whatever your field is, such as Architecture, Accounting, etc).
• Keeping these records also helps with planning resource allocation for future projects (you will have a record of which types of projects took how long and how many people were needed).

There are also personal benefits of recording your career achievements, such as:

• It helps you track and achieve your goals
• It gives you a boost in your self esteem
• It helps you keep motivated (both in your career and in your general life)
• It helps you identify areas where you need more training.
• It helps record your continuous professional development (continuous learning), which is often required to be reported to maintain your certifications.

How and When

A study published by the American Psychological Association showed that regular monitoring (in our case, recording your achievements) gives a significant improvement in performance and achievement of goals. So if your goal is to improve yourself, your career, or your job prospects, then recording your achievements is the regular monitoring that will give you this improvement.

Tracking your career is a continuous process.

You should keep a document readily accessible where you can keep it up to date easily. The more information you add to it the better. It doesn’t need to be concise, it needs to have all the details possible. You will use it as a source of information to update your resume and performance reports.

You should have it ready, so that you are ready when you need it.

Use my template if you wish. 

You can also add your certifications, courses and projects in your profile in LinkedIn (go to your profile, Add profile section, Add projects, which is sometimes under the “Recommended” section). If you do add these details in LinkedIn, I think you should still keep your own copy. Social media companies are constantly changing the way they manage, display and allow access to information in your profiles, so it is better to have a full copy yourself as well.

You can also add your past projects in your profile on the Project Management Institute ( and probably similar organisations). This can help with job offers. Some companies and recruiters search for project managers through these systems.

Make updating it a habit. A habit that serves your long term goals of career and personal growth.

Update your record of achievements regularly. Start today, don’t delay.

Add to it each time you:

• Start on  a new project
• Complete a project
• Start a new position
• Get a promotion
• Get an award
• Get recognition (such as the internal company newsletter)
• Complete a project
• Deliver a specific large milestone.

Another note. You should own the document. Keep a copy on your own private drive (such as proton drive or Google Drive). Some companies won’t let you take or copy any documents when you leave. You don’t want to lose access to this document, so it is best if you keep it yourself.

If your company has a career progress tracking system that is great. However, you should make sure you also record that progress in your own document as well. Either export the records and copy them into your document, or duplicate your records to your copy.