Quantifying Achievements on a Resume
Using hard numbers on your resume provides clear, measurable proof of your accomplishments, making your impact more tangible for employers. If you want to stand out from other applicants, you need to focus on what you achieved, not just your responsibilities. However, many people (myself included), struggle with quantifying their work, so let’s explore some practical ways to do this using Git, the backbone of modern software development.
Tip #1: Percentage of commits you contributed
Don’t just say you contributed to XYZ–that’s expected. Instead, focus on how much you contributed and the impact of those contributions. For example, to showcase your level of engagement, you could say something like:
Authored 22% of all commits in XYZ, refactoring legacy components and enhancing code maintainability.
But how do we arrive at that 22%? Let’s break it down.
Step 1: Find the total number of commits in the project
git rev-list --count HEAD # => 914
Step 2: Find how many of those commits are yours
git rev-list --count --author="$(git config --global user.name)" HEAD # => 208
Step 3: Calculate the percentage
(208 / 914) * 100 = 22.76%
Now you should have a concrete metric to showcase your contributions.
Tip #2: Measuring your code contributions
Tip #1 shows how active you were in a project, but how much actual code did you contribute? One way is to count the total lines of code in the project or in some relevant subdirectory (e.g., src/ for JavaScript developers):
Step 1: Count the total lines of code
git ls-files src/ | xargs cat | wc -l # => 32556
Step 2: Count the lines you modified
git log --author="$(git config --global user.name)" \ --pretty=tformat: --numstat -- src/ | \ awk '{added+=$1; removed+=$2} END {print added+removed}' # => 12822
Step 3: Calculate the percentage
(12822 / 32556) * 100 = 39.38
Now you should have two complementary metrics to support your resume:
Authored 22% of all commits and modified 39% of the entire source code, implementing key features and optimizing performance.
This makes your impact clear and quantifiable.
Tip #3: Number of commits in the last year
Inspired by GitHub’s contribution graph, another valuable metric is the number of commits you’ve made in the past year. This is an effective way to showcase your consistency and engagement in software development.
If your projects are scattered across multiple directories (see this script) or in the same directory, you can sum up your total commits across all repositories using:
find ~/projects -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 2 -type d -name ".git" \ -execdir git rev-list --count --since="1 year ago" \ --author="$(git config --global user.name)" HEAD 2>/dev/null \; | \ awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}' # => 1655
What this does is it (1) finds all Git repositories inside the ~/projects/ folder, scanning up to 2 levels deep. (2) Then it counts commits from the past year in each repository made by you, and (3) it sums up the commit counts across all repositories.
If the output is 1655, which is about four to five commits per day, you could write something like:
Demonstrated ability to build [bla bla bla] with a total of
1655commits in the past year across multiple repositories, demonstrating consistent contributions and iterative improvements.
Does this sounds more impactful? I think it does!
Final thoughts
By tracking your work, you provide concrete evidence of your contributions, making your resume stand out to recruiters and hiring managers. Have you tried quantifying your work like this? Do you use a different strategy? Check out git-fame for more insights and let’s discuss! If you need a resume template, you’re welcome to use mine.