How much company information can I reasonable disclose on my resume?

Question

I've signed an NDA. From what I can tell, it's fairly broad and generic. I'm not working on cutting-edge or interesting stuff, so it's probably pretty standard. I can't share the text here.

Through my own efforts, I've increased revenue from an until-now neglected traffic source substantially YoY. By the time the one-year anniversary of starting this effort has rolled around, I anticipate to have increased revenue by seven figures, probably a couple percentage points. This isn't typical for individual contributors at my company.

Obviously, this is a terrific selling point for myself. I would like to include this on my resume, but I'm not sure where the line is for what I should and should not share. It's a private company, so none of this information is public.

I'm trying to work through which of the following may be acceptable to list on my resume and which may be revealing too much information.

• Increased total company revenue by $x by doing thing.
• Increased total company revenue by y% by doing thing.
• Increased revenue in specific channel by $x by doing thing.
• Increased revenue in specific channel by y% by doing thing.
• Reversed negative trend of thing and ended year up x% in revenue rather than down projected y%.
• Reversed negative trend of thing and ended year up $x in revenue rather than down projected $y.

I'm also concerned about disclosing too much information by combination of the above. For instance, if I say the dollar amount and percentage of increase, the company's total revenue can be worked out. I'm not sure how big a deal this is, but it does seem like sensitive information. Asking my current employer is out of the question.

I would be grateful for any advice on how to proceed.

Answer 1

Resumes are sales tools. You are selling yourself to potential future employers.

Resumes need to be relevant to the expectations of that potential new position. If your new job is to sit behind a keyboard and write code, you want to focus on the skills and accomplishments that are relevant to that task. If your new job is directing company strategy and holding responsibility for revenue or sales, then you want to focus on those areas.

I'm pointing this out because it sounds like you're an individual contributor who has happened to have made some contributions to bottom line numbers. While it can be really good to show that you understand how your work can be impactful, you want to make sure you don't lose focus on the actual skills you are bringing to the position.

So - it's a really good thing to have a sentence in there of,

Increased total company revenue by y% by doing thing.

But you need to make sure the emphasis is on "doing thing" and not on the revenue number. A resume for an individual contributor that's loaded with numbers just comes off as prideful or inflated. Ideally, individual contributors should be aware of how their work impacts the bottom line, but the focus still needs to be on their work, not the bottom line.

So, that brings us to the heart of your question - how do you write such sentences while under an NDA? While we can't give a specific answer in terms of an NDA we haven't seen, in the general sense, NDA's can't stop you from talking about generic, publicly knowable things - for instance, your skills as a developer. So, while you may not mention the company or product you worked on, you can typically share details about the skills you used to do your job.

If your concern is disclosing specific numbers (i.e. company revenue), then keep in mind the specific number is likely not impactful for an individual contributor - discussing your skills, and being able to talk about how they impact the bottom line is more relevant than disclosing any specific actual number.