You will participate in many projects throughout your career. It is the best practice to pause and take a moment to reflect on what you have accomplished, what impact you made or value you created, and what you have learned that you can utilize to enhance your career.

It is also a wonderful time at the end of every project to add a section to your resume, CV, or professional portfolio for this Project-Based Work Experience. Add one to three bullet points to your resume, CV, or professional portfolio using the “Good, Better, Best Power Statements”.  

• Good “Provided excellent customer service.” This statement describes what task you did. While it supports that you have customer service experience, it lacks connections to your skills. 
•  Better “Provided excellent customer service by listening successfully to serve customers.”  This statement describes how you did it (can include soft and hard skills and includes a desirable outcome.)
• Best “Provided excellent customer service by listening and responding to customer needs and diffusing tension during rush time, increasing customer service ratings by 50%.” This statement encompasses the positive aspect of the two previous examples. It also explains what results and a quantified desirable outcome occurred because of your performance. The “best” power statements are the most difficult to write because they require you to quantify your work. You may need to reach out to others to understand the impact of your results.

While updating your resume and professional portfolio will have long-term value for your career, there are more immediate opportunities to benefit you by capturing these reflections. When you are in your professional career, and you finish a project it would be good practice to draft a version of the reflection questions above and supply it to your supervisor. This will let them know what you accomplished and the benefit you provided to the company. It also shows them how you are growing in your career and may help them in identifying future opportunities for you in your company or organization.

Not all work you do in your career is project based. There will be many tasks and responsibilities that will be associated with your day-to-day work. It would be good to do the same reflections above on a monthly or quarterly basis and submit to your supervisor whether they requested it or not. One employee made a habit of providing monthly reflections like the above to their supervisor (unrequested) as a best practice for their career. One month they forgot to submit the monthly reflection update and their supervisor came to them and said they would like to receive the reflection for this month. The supervisor had come to rely on the monthly update to know what was going on, and for them to create a similar reflection for their management. Although the reflection report was not required, it was highly valued by the employees' management. And as you might expect it led to future promotions, ending in top leadership in their company and profession.