Accomplishments Inventory Guidelines

1. Take a separate sheet of paper for every five-year period of your life up to and including your present age. On each sheet, make a list of your accomplishments for that period of time. There should be at least three to five accomplishments for every five-year period. Pick those accomplishments that you most enjoyed doing or the ones that were most satisfying to you in some way. The most useful way to state the accomplishment is by using the “I” statement and an action verb, i.e., “I learned how to play the guitar.” If you have trouble remembering, just close your eyes and picture yourself actually going through the steps, and answer the question: “What was I doing?”

2. Next to each accomplishment you list, state why this was satisfying or meaningful to you. You do not need to write a paragraph; one statement will do.

3. After you have listed the accomplishments, choose the five to seven accomplishments that seem to be most meaningful to you. These may come from any five-year period. Your task now is to define your experiences in as much detail as possible. It is important that you mention every action that you took. Just tell it as though you were telling a story to a child, begin at the beginning and go though to the end.

4. Important points to remember:

• Describe how the event started and who started it.
• Describe any planning or preparation you did for it.
• Familiarize yourself with the Action Word sheet in the resume chapter. Discuss every detail of the project using action words.
• Describe any interactions you had with people involved in the project.
• Describe your personal outcome in terms of accomplishments, success,
  good feelings.