"Responsible for managing customer relationships." "Handled daily banking transactions." "Assisted in the preparation of financial reports." These sentences appear in thousands of Kenyan CVs. They are not wrong — they accurately describe what the job involved. But they tell a recruiter nothing they couldn't find in the original job posting for that role, and that is the problem. A recruiter does not need to know what your job was supposed to involve. They need to know what you actually did with it — what happened because you were there, what you produced, what changed, what improved. Without that, your work history is just a list of positions held, not a record of value delivered.
This distinction between duties and achievements is the single most common weakness I see in CVs from Kenyan professionals, and it is also the most fixable. The mindset shift required is small but significant: instead of asking yourself "what was I responsible for?", ask yourself "what did I actually produce?" Responsibilities are inputs — they describe what you were supposed to do. Achievements are outputs — they describe what happened as a result of you doing it well. "Responsible for customer retention" is an input. "Maintained a 91% customer retention rate across a portfolio of 120 accounts over two years" is an output. The second version makes a recruiter stop and pay attention. The first one makes them scroll.
Numbers are what make achievements land. Not because recruiters care about specific figures in isolation, but because numbers make abstract claims concrete and verifiable. "Improved efficiency" is a claim anyone can make. "Reduced loan processing time from five days to two days by redesigning the internal review checklist" is a fact that demonstrates competence, initiative, and impact simultaneously. If you managed a team, say how many. If you handled a portfolio, say how large — in KES or USD. If you hit a target, say what the target was and what percentage you exceeded it by. If you reduced something — costs, errors, complaints, wait times — say by how much. Even approximate figures are better than none: "reduced processing errors by roughly 40%" is more compelling than "improved accuracy."
The rewriting process does not need to happen all at once. Start with your most recent role. Take each responsibility bullet point and ask: what was the outcome? What changed? What did I actually produce or improve? Write the new version as a one-line statement: what you did, the scale or context, the result. You will find that some duties do not easily convert to achievements — and that is useful information too, because it tells you which aspects of your work had the clearest impact, and those are the things worth highlighting. Over time, as you apply for more roles, you will get better at noticing your own achievements as you produce them, rather than having to excavate them years later.
Three Things to Do Right Now
1. Take your most recent role and rewrite every bullet point using this formula: action verb + what you did + the result or scale. For example: "Managed client onboarding process for 35 new enterprise accounts, reducing time-to-value from six weeks to three."
2. Add at least one number to each achievement — it doesn't need to be precise, but it needs to be honest. If you don't remember exact figures, check your old performance reviews, emails, or reports for reference.
3. Remove any bullet point that starts with "Responsible for" or "Assisted with" — these are duties, not achievements. Either rewrite them as outcomes or cut them entirely.
If you want someone to look at your work history and tell you specifically which lines are working and which ones need rewriting, My CV Coach will do exactly that — with honest, targeted feedback built for remote job applications.
Comments (0)