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I am just about to complete what I would call an extremely successful internship. I'm 20 years old and I've been coding since I was ~12, and having this internship has made me realize that I am pretty far ahead of the curve for my age, and I'd like to do everything I can to show that.

There was an editor at the company who was being paid ~$1000 per month to do some data entry that could easily be automated, and my boss noticed that. He allotted me about four weeks to come up with a way to automate the process, or at least to make it less time-consuming and to save the company money.

I went on a coding spree and ended up automating the entire process in less than two days, saving the company about $12,000 per year, recurring indefinitely. I was given a small bonus and my boss has been very excited about it ever since, all the while earning $10/hour.

To make a long story short, I paid for my own employment several times over in a matter of days. How can I make this accomplishment come across in my resume clearly and succinctly without giving away any information that my boss wouldn't want others knowing? Has anyone faced a similar situation or know the protocol for a situation like this?

Thanks!

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  • 11
    Do remember that many good employees save their employers millions of dollars - but still for their base pay.
    – Michael Durrant
    Aug 26 '12 at 2:52
  • So, the job market in the area has retracted by 1 position of tech editor, is that correct? :)
    – bytebuster
    Aug 26 '12 at 7:14
  • Haha, fortunately the editor still has a job. I only automated a small portion of his work, which was somewhat repetitive and monotonous. I don't know him personally, but I think that's probably a good thing, because that was an easy grand for him.
    – Billy Pilgrim
    Aug 26 '12 at 19:14
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    @superM: Oh, I'm well aware of that. As I've only been here for three months, I obviously could not have seen the need for automation in another department. However, I'm not writing my boss's resume. ;)
    – Billy Pilgrim
    Aug 27 '12 at 14:08
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    I would suggest adding it as a bullet point under your current employent, Example would be: "developed a system to streamline data entry process..etc" You can also bold that one line so that it stands out.
    – user2528
    Aug 27 '12 at 22:57
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With all the information you gave here, there is more than enough material for a good entry in your resume:

Automated data entry process, saving the company ~$12,000 per annum.

That is more than enough information, in particular in a section that is clearly marked as an internship.

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  • Excellent, thank you so much! I just wasn't sure if it was a faux pas to tie a dollar amount to a company like that, for some reason.
    – Billy Pilgrim
    Aug 25 '12 at 19:28
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    @enkrypt0r: Any achievement or accomplishment you list in your CV/resume with a metric, especially if you know any dollar amounts, are catnip for HR-managers. The form is as simple as Oded wrote, Action - Method - Result.
    – Spoike
    Aug 29 '12 at 9:36
  • @Spoike - hehe. I like your catnip analogy :)
    – Oded
    Aug 29 '12 at 9:40
  • @Oded: I think I got that from the Career Tools podcast on resume accomplishments.
    – Spoike
    Aug 29 '12 at 9:42
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At risk of being the party pooper

You didn't save them the money

Your manager did.

There was an editor at the company who was being paid ~$1000 per month to do some data entry that could easily be automated, and my boss noticed that. He allotted me about four weeks to come up with a way to automate the process

You did the actual automating, sure, but that's nothing special in itself if you didn't notice the problem. It's an interesting project, perhaps, and one you can certainly talk about later, but it was simply part of your internship - if it hadn't been you, it would have simply been another employee.

Don't take credit for the ideas of others. Note that I'm not saying don't take credit for what was probably a tricky, clever bit of coding, but the place to do that is when talking about a project, not in a "I saved the company $12,000/year" type of claim on your resume.

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    So someone whom is told what to do can never add value? -1
    – Kevin
    Oct 6 '15 at 11:35
  • Of course they can: but in this case, it was not the OP who added the value.
    – Jon Story
    Oct 6 '15 at 12:25

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