How can you persuasively sell yourself to hiring managers without sounding self-serving and egocentric? By factually describing your achievements, their importance, and how they improved your employer’s operations. And by not offering baseless descriptions of how valuable you are, predicting how impressed hiring managers will be with you, or otherwise describing yourself in unqualified grandiose terms. Remember: Bombast usually bombs. In your résumé and job applications and during your interviews, back up descriptions of your results with concrete examples, hard data and objective validation of your results. In short, present yourself in factual, specific terms. By doing so, you show your high value…

I am frequently asked, “What is the most common mistake that job-seekers make on their résumés and application essays?” My answer: Virtually all of the thousands of job applications that I have reviewed — no matter how much expertise is offered by the job-seekers they represent — are dominated by unimpressive statements from job descriptions instead of specific, achievement-oriented descriptions of successes. They fail to convey the importance of the job-seeker’s accomplishments. Therefore, they fail to show how the job seeker could improve his target employer’s operations. I was recently consulted by the communications director of one of the most powerful members…