Why You Need to Track and Talk About Your Wins, with Ashlie Journet

Hiring managers care about what you’ve achieved, not just what you were responsible for. On this episode of Find Your Dream Job, recruiter and HR professional Ashlie Journet explains why it’s important to track your wins and talk about your impact. Many people overlook their own wins, so their resumes don’t reflect the results they’ve delivered. Ashlie breaks down what employers look for, like evidence you saved time, cut costs, worked across teams, and solved problems.

She suggests keeping a “brag book” to record achievements, feedback, and metrics so you’re ready to confidently show up in your applications and interviews. Tailor each resume, highlight your strongest wins up top, and ask hiring managers about their challenges so you can show how your results meet their needs. Listen now to learn how to share your wins and stand out.

About Our Guest:

• Ashlie Journet is a recruiter and HR professional and runs The Candidate Advocate Resume Writing Services. 

Resources in This Episode:

• Connect with Ashlie on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 540:

Why You Need to Track and Talk About Your Wins, with Ashlie Journet

Airdate: February 25, 2026

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

Employers hire problem solvers. But in applications and interviews, most candidates highlight past duties, not results.

Ashlie Journet is here to discuss why you need to track and talk about your wins.

She’s a recruiter and HR professional and runs the Candidate Advocate Resume Writing Services. Ashlie joins us from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Well, let’s get right into it, Ashlie. What stops people from talking about their wins when they’re looking for work?

Ashlie Journet:

You know, Mac, I believe that people, they see their accomplishments, you know, just as their day-to-day responsibilities at work.

So when we’re doing our job day-to-day, we’re making an impact. We don’t really think of the impact we’re making. We’re just sitting saying, “You know, we’re just doing our job.” So when it comes time to write that resume, a lot of people sit and they’re like, man, I don’t have, I don’t have any achievements. I can’t think of any accomplishments.”

And this is something I experienced with early-career to executive-level clients. And I’m like, no, let’s sit down, write your responsibilities down. Now let’s go and think of the impact that you made.

If you save that company money, if you save them time, you know, if you finished a project ahead of schedule, those are the things that you need to start thinking about writing your impact out.

But again, myself, I struggle with that at times because we’re just doing our day-to-day job and we don’t think much more of it during that time.

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned that this could be a challenge for people, no matter what the stage of their career. Absolutely. Do you see a gender difference, though, Ashlie, between men and women? Is it harder for women professionals to talk about what they’ve accomplished?

Ashlie Journet:

Wow, I never thought about that until you just brought that up. I will say the majority of my clients are females. I have had quite a few males as well.

But yes, to be honest, transparent about that question, yes, I do, if I look back, it is more difficult for my female clients to think about their achievements. And my last few clients were director to executive-level clients, and they struggled with their impact, and they’re like, “Well, I just did this, this, and this.”

But I’m like, well, what’s, what’s the impact? The company hasn’t kept you for the last, you know, five years or 10 years, you weren’t promoted over and over again because you didn’t make an impact. They would have gotten rid of you if you didn’t make the impact.

So that’s where I really helped them dig deep to recognize their achievements and accomplishments. And sometimes that can be a difficult part of the resume writing process because that takes time. That takes the most time in the process when I’m working with my client.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, and we’re going to talk in a moment about how to highlight your accomplishments. Before we get there, let’s step back and talk about employers. Results matter to recruiters like you, and you wear two hats. You’re both a coach and a recruiter. But why do results matter so much to employers when they’re considering applications from different candidates?

Ashlie Journet:

So as a recruiter, when I’m looking at a resume, right, before I start the recruiting process, I speak to my hiring managers, we do an intake call. And during that time, they let me know what they’re looking for.

So when I’m reviewing a resume, let’s just say, for example, I am looking for a procurement specialist. They do a lot of the purchasing and sourcing of our maintenance parts that we manage for some of our clients.

On those resumes, I am expecting to see how you initiated cost-saving initiatives, right? Did you save the company money? Did you make them more money? Or did you save them time?

When you list those things on your resume, it’s showing your future employers what you have been able to do for your previous employers. And it lets them know what you can bring to their team, the value that you would add to their team if they were to hire you and add them to their team.

Mac Prichard:

What happens, Ashlie, in your experience, if, as an applicant, you don’t talk about your accomplishments, you don’t share your wins, especially in your application materials, before you get into the interview room?

Ashlie Journet:

I’ll be honest, when you don’t share those achievements, and let me say this, it’s a very competitive job market right now. Now is not the time, I like to say, now is not the time to keep it cute and mute about your achievements.

There are going to be other applicants who list their achievements. So when you don’t, you are risking not getting a callback for an interview or for a phone screen because there are other people who have those achievements.

And then I’ll also be honest, I’ve seen a lot of tasks on resumes while viewing them as a recruiter. And sometimes I’ll still reach out to those candidates, and I will help them to articulate their value.

And I’m like, well, you said you did this on your resume. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What was the impact? And then we’ll go through, and I’ve actually had candidates go back and add that to their resume before their interview.

Mac Prichard:

I love that expression you shared a moment ago; it’s not a time to be cute and mute. What about your confidence as a candidate? What happens when you do to your own horn and share your accomplishments? How does that affect your confidence in the job search?

Ashlie Journet:

I feel like when you can easily articulate your value, but first you have to have that confidence from within. You have to believe in yourself if you want anyone else to believe in you.

So when you walk into this job search and into your interviews and your phone screens with confidence, I feel like it allows you to better articulate your value. And when you articulate your value in a way that snatches the attention of the recruiter and the hiring managers, that really excites the hiring managers.

And you know, the candidates that do that, I get the notes from the hiring manager right after, like, “Hey, let’s move forward with an offer, or let’s go ahead and move forward with a second interview for this candidate.”

I’ve seen it over and over and over again. And the candidates who are less confident, who don’t really elaborate on their answers and talk about their achievements, those are the ones that aren’t making it to the next phase in the hiring process.

Mac Prichard:

You mentioned reviewing resumes a moment ago. You’ve looked at thousands of resumes over the years. And there are different estimates out there. I think one you use on your website is that recruiters look at a resume perhaps for 45 seconds.

What can a member of the audience do to highlight their accomplishments so they do get noticed during that 45-second review?

Ashlie Journet:

I would say to start tailoring your resume. I’ll be honest, as a recruiter, about 80% of the candidates that apply for the role don’t even qualify on paper. And I think that’s because this job market is a bit intense right now. It’s all over the place. So people are mass-applying to multiple jobs with the same resume.

And I know tailoring your resume can take time. And some people are saying, you know, I don’t have enough time to tailor my resume to every single job. But tailoring your resume is what’s going to get you in the door.

For example, again, I’ll go back to procurement. If I am recruiting for a procurement role, I’m scanning that resume. I’m looking for cost-saving initiatives. I’m looking for sourcing. I want to see that you’ve worked with vendors. You have that vendor management experience as well, right?

So if I don’t see any of those things in the resume, I’m onto the next resume. I am dispositioning that candidate and moving on to the next person. So there are certain keywords that I am looking for when I’m looking at resumes.

Mac Prichard:

We’ve talked about the importance of accomplishments both on your application materials and especially your resume. What are the wins that matter most to employers in your experience? If you had to pick even just one or perhaps up to three, what stands out?

Ashlie Journet:

I would say collaboration. So when you have on your resume, let’s say, you do project management. If you’re partnering with the engineering team and you’re partnering with the maintenance team to work on a project right there, that shows cross-functional collaboration, shows that you’re able to get along with people. You’re also a team player.

You’re able to partner with them to accomplish, let’s just say, project management, right? You’re working on a project together. If you guys were able to come together to save money, save the company money, save them time, and come out, you know, ahead of time, but under budget, like that’s the game changer.

So they want to see the collaboration. They want to see the teamwork. They want to see that you can save time. They definitely want to see that you can save money or make them more money. So I think those are the most important things, at least for the roles that I’m recruiting for, when we get to the procurement phase there.

Mac Prichard:

Okay, yeah, the top three. I thought you might say save time and save money, but it’s striking to me, Ashlie, that you’re also talking about the importance of playing well with others, about the importance of teamwork.

Ashlie Journet:

It’s important for people to want to work with you. You want to be easy to work with as well. You don’t want to come across as a difficult individual to work with. So being able to cultivate relationships with different people across the business, different personalities, diversified personalities, I feel like that’s a game-changer. That’s a great skill to list in your resume.

Mac Prichard:

Terrific. We’re going to pause right here for a moment, and we’re going to take a break. Stay with us. When we come back, Ashlie Journet will continue to share her advice on why you need to track and talk about your wins.

We’re back in the Mac’s List Studio. I’m talking with Ashlie Journet.

She’s a recruiter and HR professional and runs the Candidate Advocate Resume Writing Services. Ashlie joins us from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Now, Ashlie, before the break, we were talking about why you need to track and talk about your wins. Now let’s talk about how to do it. And you’ve got a number of tips that you share with your career coaching clients.

Let’s talk about the best way to track your wins. What is the system you recommend? I know you’re a big fan of brag books. Tell us more about that: brag books, how they work, and how they’re going to help you.

Ashlie Journet:

Absolutely, so I feel like everyone should have a brag book, and it doesn’t literally have to be a book that you’re writing in. I like to use OneNote on my computer.

So whenever you have an achievement at work, I mean, in real time, start writing those achievements out, because it makes it if you don’t write them down, it makes it difficult to add them to your resume.

And it’s extremely difficult to remember at the end of the year, when it’s time to do performance reviews, when it’s time for employees to do those self-evaluations, they’re thinking, my gosh, what did I do over the year? What was my impact?

And you want to be able to keep track of that throughout the year. And keeping track does not only help with your resume, it doesn’t only help with performance reviews.

It also helps you build your confidence because you know sometimes during the job search you may think that, “I’m not worthy or I’m not qualified for a job or maybe my skills aren’t as good as what I think they are what I thought they were.”

But if you go back to that brag book, if you start keeping track of things, you’ll be able to go back to your confidence, which is going to build, and you’re gonna say, you know what, I am worthy, I am qualified for this job, my work is impeccable. Those are the top three reasons why you should have one.

Mac Prichard:

Right, and so that’s why you should have it. Let’s talk more about what you should put in your brag book.

What have you seen work for your clients when they’re getting ready for that annual review or preparing to start a job search? What kinds of information have they shared that have gone into their brag book, whatever form it might take?

Ashlie Journet:

So I’ll speak about one client, actually, when I worked with her, this is probably about two years ago. She actually kept a brag book of all of her achievements and accomplishments, and she was actually promoted four times in five years at her employer.

So she was actually in project management. So she kept track of those projects. So she had a high-visibility project that she was managing. She talked about the resource allocation.

She talked about her working with multiple teams, again, that cross-functional collaboration. She discussed working on global teams and working on global projects, saving the company money and saving them time.

Leading teams as well. How she also was able to get some of her direct reports. She really coached and developed them for them to get promoted. So those are things that she kept writing down month by month.

So when she eventually came to me, she had those notes written out. She also had her performance reviews, which were stellar, you know, from her current, it was her current employer at the time. And she went on to get a VP role after we wrote her resume.

Mac Prichard:

So think about those three things that you said in the first segment matter to employers, the three top wins. Save time, save money, work well with others, and look for examples. And keep your performance reviews.

When you have all that information, how have you seen your clients in your coaching business take that information and apply it to their resumes and application materials?

Ashlie Journet:

Well, most of my clients weren’t doing that, so that’s why I have to have them really dig deep to recognize and own and articulate their value and their god-given talent.

It was just that particular client who actually did it. So when it came to me asking her about her achievements, she didn’t have to think very hard. There were some things that I helped her recognize that she had overlooked, but it didn’t take as much digging for her because she was already keeping track of those achievements.

So now, when I’m working with my clients, again, it’s definitely difficult for them to recognize and own those achievements. I let them know, you know, going forward, to make sure that they are tracking those things. So it’s not difficult. We don’t have to go through this long, drawn-out process to think about what your achievements are.

Mac Prichard:

What’s the best way to put those wins into your resume and application materials?

Ashlie Journet:

So I would say on resumes, I feel like the executive summary or your professional summary, that is like your 10 seconds of fame right there, right? That should make a hiring manager or recruiter want to continue to read through your resume.

So I feel like your expertise should be in there, maybe one achievement. Then I like to have a career snapshot section underneath there, well, under your skills section, a career snapshot. It’s going to have maybe three to four of the best achievements you had throughout your career over the last seven to 10 years.

You want those top three achievements, or top three to four achievements there. Then when we get down to your experience section, I like to create a small summary, maybe three to four sentences max, of your responsibilities and overview of your scope of work, followed by, again, two, I say two to five bullets of achievements, but I don’t repeat any achievements that are already in that career snapshot.

Mac Prichard:

What should you do when you’re in the interview room, Ashlie? What have you seen work for your clients? What’s the most effective way for them to talk about the wins that they’ve outlined in their application materials?

Ashlie Journet:

One question I always tell people to ask, I’ll even, if I pivot from my clients to my candidates when I’m recruiting. At the end of my phone screens, I always tell candidates, they’ll ask me, “Hey Ashlie, are there any specific questions I should ask a manager?” I always tell them to ask a manager what their current pain points are. And that is something that has worked for me throughout my career.

I ask what your current pain points are on your team, and then I follow up with a response on how I have dealt with a similar thing, a similar pain point, the actions that I took to resolve that pain point, and then the outcome. And that has gone over very well with both my clients and my candidates for recruiting.

Mac Prichard:

In your experience, both as a recruiter and a career coach, do you find that most candidates ask employers about their problems and then get that opportunity to talk about how they’ve solved similar problems in the past?

Ashlie Journet:

I would say during this job market, not as much. And I’ll be honest, I feel like a lot of candidates right now, a lot of people have been ghosted, right? A lot of people have applied for hundreds of jobs and haven’t gotten a callback or haven’t gotten that job offer.

So some of these candidates are just showing up, excited to have the opportunity to interview. So at the end of my screening calls, I’m like, hey, do you have any questions? And I’m not pressuring them, but I want them to know that it’s okay. It’s okay to ask questions, or I’ll hear someone say, hey, I’m sorry, I have a question. And I tell you, you don’t need to apologize.

You are searching for a new job, like a job, you getting a job that will change the life of your family. It changes your life. You know, this is a pivotal part in your career. So I encourage them to ask questions. And if it’s something that I myself can’t answer, I tell them to save that question for the hiring manager. But I do encourage them to ask questions.

Mac Prichard:

So employers welcome questions, and if you want to stand out from your competitors, that’s one way to do it, especially if you’re asking about the employer’s problems. What about mistakes that you might see candidates make when talking about their wins?

Some people, for example, might worry, “If I talk too much about myself, I might come across as egotistical.” Is that a mistake, or are there other errors people should pay attention to that you’ve seen?

Ashley Journet:

I don’t necessarily think it’s a mistake. I feel like it is a learned behavior that I, myself, included has had. feel like society tells you that you shouldn’t brag about yourself.

It comes off as selfish, know, and I think those are things that people think about in those interviews, like, I don’t want to talk about myself. I don’t want to come off as prideful. I don’t want to come off, you know, as a selfish person.

But I want people to realize that talking about those achievements during your resume is just letting the, you know, it’s further letting the hiring team know why they should add you to their team. It’s letting them know how you will be able to impact their team by talking about those ones.

If you’re just talking about your task, that’s not giving them the green light to want to hire you. It’s actually giving them a caution sign if you can’t speak and articulate your achievements.

Mac Prichard:

We’ve talked about looking for work, but you’ve brought up a number of times the importance of tooting your own horn in your current job, and particularly when it comes time for performance reviews.

What’s the cost, Ashlie, of assuming your manager already knows what you’re doing? What have you seen happen to people who just think, she or he is aware of that. I don’t need to tell my boss I’ve done that.

Ashlie Journet:

That can cost you a promotion because, at the end of the day, just say you’re on a large team or even a team of three to five people, a smaller team, and your manager is not keeping up with all of your achievements. That’s not their responsibility.

Yes, it’s their responsibility to congratulate you or appreciate you. That’s what managers should be doing. Companies should celebrate and appreciate you, but it is not their responsibility to write down every single achievement. It is your responsibility as the employee to remember those achievements and bring them up on that self-evaluation.

Mac Prichard:

Well, it’s been a great conversation. Now tell us, Ashlie, what’s next for you?

Ashlie Journet:

What’s next for me? I’m actually, I’ve paused on taking resume-writing clients until Q2 of 2026 to kind of focus on another baby that I have. My husband and I recently launched a Christian clothing brand back in November 2025.

So that is where my focus is right now, but I’ll begin taking my resume clients in 2026. So I do have people reaching out to me, and they are on a wait list right now.

Mac Prichard:

Well, congratulations on the launch of the new business. know members of the audience can learn more about your career coaching services by visiting your website, candidateadvocate.com. We’ll be sure to include that in the show notes.

And you also invite listeners and viewers to connect with you on LinkedIn. When you do reach out to Ashlie, please mention you saw or heard her on Find Your Dream Job.

Now, Ashlie, given all the great advice you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing you want an audience member to remember about why you need to track and talk about your wins?

Ashlie Journet;

I want you to track and talk about your wins, not just for your employers, but for yourself. To remind yourself that you are capable, that you are qualified, and that you are worthy of getting your dream job.

Mac Prichard:

Thank you for listening to Find Your Dream Job.

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Have a question or suggestion? Email me at mac@macslist.org or connect with me on LinkedIn.

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Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media and creates our transcripts.

Our sound engineer and editor is Anna McClain. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.

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