Executives are very aware of the concept of a ROI, or return on investment. The business world is highly competitive, and it’s critical to make sure that every investment will bring in significant returns.

It’s the same thing for employers when they’re trying to fill an opening. They must feel confident that they will receive a great return on their investment. When a return isn’t guaranteed, you won’t be hired. As an executive, then, how can you prove to a company that you’re worth more than your salary? Here are a few ideas to consider …

Look at Your Revenue

If there were quantifiable parts to your previous job, you want to make sure to put them into numbers on your executive resume that will help illustrate your success. For executives, businesses often look to revenue, so show what you were responsible for with your previous employers, whether this means accounts you brought in, sales prospects you’d sold to, or other elements of revenue.

For instance, you might note that you not only were able to slash hiring expenses by cutting advertising costs (advertised on free websites), but you were able to create a stellar staff that increased revenue by X amount of dollars over a year’s time. Using numbers is critical when trying to show the return on investment that you represent for a prospective employer at the executive level.

How Productive Was Your Staff?

The old “time is money” adage is extremely true in business, where companies do everything possible to decrease costs by getting more productiveness from every work hour. An executive who shows how he was able to affect productivity in simple terms stands a good chance of getting a job.

For example, you can look at the amount of time it took to complete a major project that resulted in a revenue increase of 3 percent for the year. Here’s a simple example; consider that you employed twenty workers for twelve weeks at a cost of /hr and forty hours per week shifts for a certain project. Employee time, then, accounted for costs of ,000. However, you invested in a new training module that cost 0 per employee, as well as updated software for ,000 that cut the project time down to 6 weeks, including paid training time. Your final cost for the project is ,000, which means you saved the company ,000, still increased the revenue by 3 percent, and was able to increase process efficiency so that the workers could be used to enhance other projects.

Other Numbers to Think About

If your segment of the company didn’t work in terms of revenue, you can still note numbers that represent progress. For example, if you’d managed customer service, use the metrics that you used in your old department to show improvements in customer satisfaction. Phone contact with customers can be a troublesome issue, so show how you decreased the time span of each call or helped your department handle more customers per day on the phones.

Remember, just like on your previous jobs, prospective employers want to know their potential ROI when looking at candidates. Since this is something you’re used to doing, show them exactly why they should hire you by giving examples they can understand.