Greetings, one and all!

We hope that you have gotten March 2012 off to a truly great start. Indeed, we have: the executive job market has picked up considerably, and, we are busier than we've been in a very long time.

At The Green Suits, all this new activity has us reconnecting with many people who have been off our radar screens for a few months or for several years. And we are meeting lots of great talent who we have never engaged before.

Whether we know the person on the other end of the line or not, our phone conversations with business executive talent are usually the best part of the work day.

During phone calls, some candidates request feedback on their résumés.  While we are not a  résumé-writing service, we do look to offer whatever meaningful insight--from on our many years in the business of hunting heads--that we can.

Often, the conversations on résumés turns to metrics--the numeric and monetary measures of an executive's career success. Generally speaking, we can count on our friends in the direct/interactive marketing or marketing analytics spaces to provide great metrics in their  résumés (CVs). For instance, we learn from sales pros how much new business--percentage and dollar-wise--they sold beyond their 2011 revenue goals. And, we discover from our marketing and web analytics executives just how much their insight gathering and exploitation have improved recency, frequency, and monetary results for their or their clients' integrated marketing campaigns.

One would expect that sustainability and CSR-focused talent would similarly provide lots of juicy metrics in their résumés. But, more often than not, we find that these Green Suits skip the numbers--serving up instead long, detailed descriptions of their work assignments, which a bleary-eyed and easily distracted hiring manager may read as: BLAH BLAH BLAH.

So let this be a clarion call to anyone looking to further their career in the sustainability, CSR, greentech/cleantech, or related "green" industries: THERE IS NO WAY AROUND IT; YOU MUST INCLUDE CRITICAL METRICS IN YOUR CV!

Our economy in finally emerging from four years of desert-like conditions. It is not just a gut feeling; the executive employment market is improving. So use the upswing as a reason to re-work your résumé for optimal effect.

In particular, employ lots of #s, %s, $s, ₤s,¥s, €s, and Δs in your CV to demonstrate the positive impact your efforts have had on your company's or organization's Triple Bottom Line (profits + people + planet).

If you struggle writing about you and your career accomplishments then you may seek out a professional  résumé service. But know the such a service will set you back at least a few hundred dollars. Or, you can pick up any one of several self-help books that are available, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Resumeby Susan Ireland.

Whether you do the "re-do" yourself or hire a writer for a three-figure-sum, d0 tell your "metric" story well. It could mean the difference between getting hired and not getting hired.