What have you done?!?
In a recent conversation an unknown factor appeared. While you can list everything that you have done for a company, and what technology was used, do you know what impact the work you did had? And, is it fair for prospective employers to ask you about this impact?
A tangible way to think about this question, is through non-profits. When we donate materials or time to a non-profit, it helps someone, and we can see how it helps them. What have you done to help another person improve their lives? Even just a little, say with new socks, shoes, cloths, maybe an umbrella, or a tent to live in.
This question becomes a little harder, since you may be part of a larger team to that is unaware of how it’s actions are affecting the organization as a whole. Larger organizations break their projects into consumable bits and pieces that are actioned over time. Thus understanding that you may be part of a larger project to streamline an order delivery system, could be lost in the fact that your only part (and a very important part at that) in the process may be to redesign the databases to orient data in a different fashion, with no further explanation of why it’s needed.
Let’s take a look at “What have you done?!?” means from the primary business activities.
Sales
You are a sales rep for a company. Your job is to cold call as many people on a list as possible and identify potential prospects who might be interested in investing in a new product. After 6 months, the best of the best will be chosen for 1 full time position. (Sound familiar, Will Smith acted out this part.)
But, what if the product you are selling has a huge amount of paperwork? And the backlog isn’t due to you, but to people down stream. You send a 1/4 packet to a prospective client to fill out. The Forms request common information, like name and address, every 6 sheets or so. You are finding that your client complain about this 1 aspect of the ordering process. Could you speed the documentation process up? And, if so, would this process improve your sales, your standing in the company, and the companies overall edge against their competitors?
Marketing
Marketing’s Job is to make prospective clients aware of existing and new products coming onto the market. Yet, while the company may be spending thousands of dollars to advertise their product through news papers, the news paper is not providing you with metrics are traceable. Thus, how do you know that you are reaching the projected market? Is this money well spent, or wasted?
Your idea is to incorporate a QR code, a URL, or a PromoCode into the ad so that prospective clients can receive a special gift for the time they spend entering in their personal demographic information. Now you know that X% of the readers are responding to the add. You know who the readers are that are responding. And you can tell if this matches the demographics you are targeting.
If the Ad contains a coupon, this will track another audience as they use the coupon in a store. Merge that information with their customer loyalty information, and you now have an information base about who uses your coupon and at which stores.
But this is a tried and true marketing method, that also includes specific website landing pages, to help identify various audiences through various media. What is the next method to help your company identify the right prospect to target for your product, that is cost effective, and provides greater accuracy?
Production
Dr. Deming, renowned American Engineer, traveled to Japan after World War II to help them rebuild and improve their production. What did he do that no one else would? He asked Japan to change their management structure, and instead of pushing ideas and improvements from the top down, to listen to the people using the product, making the product, distributing the product, to provide ideas on how it could be improved. Quality in the product went up. Where Japan produced 1 in 1000 bulbs that worked, they now produced 999 in 1000 bulbs that worked.
What have you done to improve the companies product of a product? Did you help them implement 3D printing to reduce time to tangible product? Are you using 3D printing to produce parts faster?
Unfortunately, working on the line is becoming an obsolete job opportunity, as more of the line is automated. Though, you might be the person to see how the line could be automated, or condensed. Ingenuity isn’t just for college graduates, people are using Legos to build new production methods all the time.
Or you could be the person who discovers a new way to package or ship the product? Or you could be the person to identify how to create matter from energy and reproduce anything, anywhere, anytime.
Research and Development
Sales sells the product, Production produces the product, Marketing finds prospects to sell the product to, while Research and Development creates or enhances existing and new products. But where do these ideas come from?
If you paid attention to the opening paragraph in Production, the ideas come from the floor, the distributors, the resellers, the sales reps, the marketing agents, the designers, the end users. Everyone. Including the very people dedicated to developing new products - Research and Development.
In your development process, did you improve the production process? Did you improve the way the product was packaged? Did you improve it’s robustness during distribution? Did you incorporate new ideas from customers into the product? Did you discover a new way to use the product? Did you find that the product, when used with another product, produced a benefit to the customer?
What have you done?
What have you done to improve your customer’s ability to be and remain competitive in the current economic condition?
Does your resume reflect tasks or performance improvements?














