How to Add KPIs and Various Performance Metrics to Your 2024 Resume

KPIs (key performance indicators) are excellent for showcasing your expertise. However, deciding which KPIs to include on your resume can be challenging. You might need to choose between your impressive sales track record, the number of leads you converted, and the retention rates you maximized.

Consider the big-picture impact, such as the bold financial opportunity you suggested that doubled annual cash flow. Selecting the right KPIs isn't a simple "this or that" decision. The KPIs you choose should create a data-led narrative of your past achievements.

Focusing on these success metrics, find out:

• What are KPIs, in the context of your resume?
• The difference between KPIs that hit all the targets vs ones that miss the mark.
• How can you quantify KPIs to stop recruiters right in their tracks?
• What are the most common KPIs you can use to show your success?
• 8 industries and their specific KPIs: real-life professional examples

What are KPIs?

KPIs are metrics (e.g. customer engagement, ROI, etc.) that show your professional growth. Imagine them as the North Star that shines a light on how you achieve strategic goals.

Resume KPIs aren't just about boasting your "numbers"—they hint to recruiters how you define success and your ability to turn ideas into tangible outcomes, as well as pointing out what the value of working with you would be.

One golden rule that differentiates good from bad KPIs is the way you quantify your success. Bad KPIs have no context—they are a long and endless list of responsibilities: I did this, and this, and that…

Good resume KPIs, on the other hand, quantify how you performed by using specific numbers and statistics, when possible.

The sales consultant listed just a couple of responsibilities and outcomes of her role. There are no specifics as to what was actually achieved, the skills that were used, or how her efforts affected the company.

Instead of creating a similar, vague listing in your resume experience section, here’s what you should do.

Notice how the sales consultant has added a specific skill and KPI to each bullet? Thus, she has painted the full picture of her experience and capabilities, highlighting the best results of her work.

How to decide if a KPI should be part of your resume?

As you may know, recruiters will be scanning your resume, spending up to seven seconds to assess if you’re a good fit. These seconds are what makes the difference between the "Invite for an Interview" and "Rejected" piles.

How do you ensure that your KPIs always shine a light on your value as a professional?

Tailor your performance metrics to:

Show you understand the job priorities

Choose your resume KPIs, based on how closely they're related to the job you're applying for. The more relevant the accomplishment, the closer to the top of your resume it should be.

Translate results into numbers

Numbers play a deep psychological role on any reader. Think back to the last book or document you dove into. On the first read, what popped out more: the numbers or the words?

Quantify your KPIs to tell your professional story with data, like percentages, numbers, amount of sales, etc. Of course, if you don't have exact metrics, think about how you brought value to your role. We'll get more into this in the next section of this guide.

Be persuasive and believable

Businesses thrive on data and so numbers are the way forward if you want to add credibility to your experience. Use your performance metrics to paint the full landscape of your impact and your performance.

What is more, ensure your numbers are actually believable. It could be hard to convince someone that a junior sales representative could be responsible for a "500% increase in annual profit margins". Not impossible, but definitely sounds far-fetched.

Feature your unique skill set and know-how

Instead of cherry-picking the achievements you want to brag about, remember that tangible KPIs prove your skills. Select numbers that show you know how to lead, communicate, work with specific software, etc.

Recruiters would much rather receive a notion of your unique expertise and strengths than an endless list of “I did this and that…”

How to write your resume KPIs

Now that we've covered the basics of good KPIs, how do you include them on your resume?

First, you need to be clear about the metrics that would be impressive to recruiters. Select the ones that align with the job requirements and your work history.

Here are a few common scenarios, where you have:

Clear, quantifiable metrics (e.g. you work in sales, marketing, finance, etc.)

Use non-confidential reports, analyses, surveys, feedback, or testimonials to calculate your KPIs. There are also plenty of online tools and formulas (e.g. to find % of click-through rates) to help you out.

Access to some data, yet no metrics

Align job requirements to your current achievements. Present numbers, whenever possible, to define your outcomes and success.

Zero performance tracking

While numbers are important KPIs, you have other worthwhile (and impressive) achievements, like how the project, team, and organization benefited from your work.

Illustrate your impact by:

• using client, colleague, or management feedback or testimonials.
• comparing your work with your colleagues and team.
• listing awards or industry-crucial recognitions.
• detailing the scope and scale of your work (e.g. project and team sizes, skills used, and results achieved).

While this UX/UI designer has surely listed important skills and technologies for the industry, he hasn’t proven his successful track record.

What recruiters would read this as is a list of skills they want, but wouldn’t be able to grasp the candidate’s individuality or abilities.

Within the example above, the candidate has gone on to showcase skills (e.g. designing, visual branding, etc.) and performance metrics that help his experience stand out.

Recruiters would be able to easily get a notion of the areas and projects in which this UX/UI designer would excel.

4 General KPI examples for your resume

In the next part of this guide, we'll show you some general KPIs to include in your resume.

They have to do with:

• Growth: sales and revenue
• Cost-savings
• Impact
• High-frequency or volume

Growth: sales and revenue KPIs

Growth KPIs show how you contributed to your organization's development. When quantifying these metrics, always mark the specific figure or percentage you contributed to.

Here are some samples of sales and revenue numbers for your KPI-led resume:

• Revenue (monthly or annual)
• ROI of strategies and efforts
• Departmental or organizational profitability
• Customer or client growth
• Number of deals, partnerships, or new markets entered
• Conversion rates
• Frequency and success of sales campaigns
• Team growth or hired candidates
• Products designed or launched
• Website visits or page views
• Amount of secured funding

Cost-savings KPIs

This one is pretty simple. Think back to instances where you were responsible for saving resources and quantify:

• How much time or money did you save?
• How were you able to do so?

Cost-saving KPIs show you impacted operational efficiency via problem-solving, efficiency or process streamlining, services or product improvement, etc.

Here are eight cost-cutting KPIs for your resume:

• Company net or department profit improvement
• Cutting project costs
• Saving operational costs
• Decreased time spent on tasks, projects, etc.
• Reducing staff turnover
• Boosting cost per conversion
• Raising client retention or customer satisfaction rates
• Decreasing response time

Impact KPIs

Whether you're in the service industry or human resources (or leadership role), you don't want to miss out on quantifying your impact! Impact KPIs signify who benefited from your work or the success rate of your efforts.

On your resume, mark them as the rise in the percentage of employee or user engagement, customer satisfaction, or retention rates.

You could also include impact KPIs via the number of:

• People you served (per hour, day, month, etc.).
• Customers you helped.
• Users or stakeholders your work impacted.
• Staff you managed (the size of the team you led).
• Teams or departments you coordinated.
• Clients or accounts you managed.
• People you interviewed (for how many positions) and hired.
• Training sessions you delivered.
• Awards you received.

High-frequency or volume KPIs

If you feature your high-frequency or volume KPIs, don't just list the tasks you did. Instead, pinpoint your aptitude by complementing tasks with skills and results.

Frame your high-frequency or volume KPIs within specific periods. Remember that quick product, project, or service turnaround, signifies your expertise.

High-frequency or volume KPIs:

• Projects you completed in a week, month, or year.
• Average size of the projects, you delivered, or amount of deals closed.
• Leads conversion rate.
• Articles written for a specific industry.
• Marketing campaigns created and led.
• Size of data sets worked with.
• Meetings you organized.  
• Phone calls or emails answered.

Eight industry-specific KPIs for your resume

In the next part of our guide, we’ll present a few examples of industries that have really easy-to-find KPIs.

1. Marketing KPIs

If you've worked in marketing - whether in managing social media campaigns, SEO optimization, copywriting, etc. - you’d quickly be able to grasp what your success metrics are.

Include the number or percent, followed by your outcomes.

Get inspired from these top marketing KPIs:

• Decreased cost per conversion
• Return on marketing investment (ROMI)
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Increased conversion rates
• Increased online, web, or mobile traffic
• Click-through-rate
• Impressions generated
• Social media engagement
• Quantity of content created
• Email open/response rates
• Leads conversion percentage
• SEO rank

2. Sales KPIs

Sales metrics could have a monetary value or list the number of new customers, deals, or partnerships closed.

Aim to be as accurate as possible when listing your sales KPIs and select the ones that best match your expertise:

• Amount of partnerships created or deals signed
• Size of the average deal closed
• Clients managed
• Number of new customers acquired
• Customer retention rate
• Sales opportunities created
• Total revenue generated
• Sales growth rate
• Net profit
• Gross profit
• Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA)
• Inventory turnover
• Average sales size

3. Customer service KPIs

Anyone working in a customer-facing role can include how they reached an excellent success score.

Quantify on your resume your:

• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)
• Net promoter score (NPS)
• First call resolution rate
• Average response time
• Average resolution time
• Customer retention percent
• Cost of customer acquisition
• Customer lifetime value
• Amount of tickets completed within set time

4. Project manager KPIs

Project managers could detail cost or schedule metrics, as well as communication and risk management ones.

Think of situations that best describe how you impacted the:

• Percentage of projects completed on time
• Average of projects within budget
• Number of project milestones met
• Optimized resource utilization
• Stakeholder satisfaction rate
• Risk management
• Project ROI (Return on Investment)
• Schedule variance or Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
• Cost variance or Cost Performance Index (CPI)
• Earned Value Management (EVM)

5. Product Manager KPIs

Success metrics would once more be linked with optimized resources and user impact.

Quantify the actions, steps, and skills you used to improve the overall product strategy, launch, and performance, over a set period.

In your experience, you could have:

• Successfully launched products
• Improved feature adoption
• Increase product usage metrics
• Reduced cycle times or time to market
• Reduced errors
• Improved forecast accuracy
• Increased product revenue or market shares
• Impacted customer acquisition or retention
• Boosted user engagement

6. Finance KPIs

While including success metrics could be your winning card on your resume, think twice before sharing confidential information.

Sample KPIs you could prove (and/or anonymize) include:

• Monthly, quarterly, and yearly financial reporting accuracy
• Cost-saving measures implemented
• Revenue growth rate
• Return on investment (ROI) or Return on Equity (ROE)
• Profit margin improvement
• Budget or cash flow management
• Debt reduction
• Managing an investment portfolio
• Compliance and audit results
• Risk management
• Tax optimization
• Mergers and acquisitions

7. HR KPIs

Define the success rate of your hiring and team development efforts with some of these metrics:

• Employee retention rate
• Time to hire
• Cost per hire
• Employee satisfaction or engagement scores
• Training completion rate
• Performance management systems
• Absenteeism rate
• Operational efficiency
• Onboarding effectiveness
• Reducing employee turnover

8. System administrator KPIs

Time and number of users or systems are an important metric in any IT-related role.

Ensure that you've framed your skills within the following outcomes:

• System uptime percentage
• Number of resolved help desk tickets
• User support satisfaction
• Incident response time
• Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
• Network downtime
• Server performance
• System backup and successful data recovery percentage
• Speed of shipped updates
• Number of accounts or users supported
• Increased virtualization efficiency
• Disaster recovery testing
• IT asset management

Key takeaways

• Show your potential employers you understand your future responsibilities by featuring KPIs that match the job requirements more prominently.
• Excellent resume metrics are ones that are persuasive, believable, and prove your unique skill set and knowledge.
• Include KPIs with numbers (e.g. increased profit margins, AVG percent of engagements), whenever possible in your resume experience and summary.
• If you’re unable to list specific figures, either write a guess estimate or detail your actual role outcomes.
• Check the nature of your KPIs - if they’re confidential, substitute numbers with letters.