An achievements-based CV organizes your experience around what you delivered rather than what you were responsible for. Instead of describing the scope of your role, each bullet point under a position describes a specific outcome you produced: a number that moved, a team that grew, a problem that was solved, a product that shipped. This format is most effective in commercial, sales, leadership, and product roles where hiring decisions are made by people who want evidence of future performance, not confirmation of past job titles. It requires more discipline to write than a responsibilities-based CV, but produces a substantially more persuasive document.
Use the three-part structure: action you took + context (scope, constraint, or challenge) + measurable outcome with a timeframe. Avoid starting bullets with "responsible for" or "worked on." Use active verbs: built, grew, reduced, launched, negotiated, closed, restructured, delivered. The outcome should answer: what is different now that was not different before? Numbers ground the claim. Even approximate numbers ("roughly 3x," "approximately €40M") are more credible than no numbers at all. After writing each bullet, ask yourself: "Could anyone else in that role have written this bullet without having done this thing?" If yes, it is a responsibility. If no, it is an achievement.
Yes, and they are expected, particularly in commercial and leadership roles. Revenue figures, team sizes, budget ownership, growth percentages, and customer numbers are all standard on well-written CVs at every level. Where precise figures are commercially sensitive, use a range, a magnitude descriptor, or a contextual comparison. What you cannot do is leave all numbers out and expect the hiring manager to infer the scale and quality of your work. A hiring manager reading "increased sales" has no way to know whether you increased sales by 3% or 300%. The number is the claim; without it, the bullet is not making one.
A functional CV groups skills and achievements by category (leadership, communication, technical skills) rather than by chronological employment. Achievements CVs, as described here, are still chronological: each achievement is listed under the role in which it occurred. Functional CVs are sometimes recommended for career changers, but they are generally less trusted by hiring managers because they obscure employment dates and make it harder to verify where an experience actually took place. An achievements-based chronological CV, which this template uses, provides the specificity that hiring managers want while keeping your career story legible and verifiable.
You almost certainly have more than you think. Most people undervalue contributions that felt like normal parts of their job at the time. Start with the biggest challenge you faced in each role: what was the hardest thing you had to figure out or fix? Then move to the questions: what improved while you were there? What did not exist before you arrived and existed after you left? What would have happened if you had not been in that role? The answers to those questions, when written up with specific details and honest numbers, are your achievements. The process of finding them is accurate recall.