Executives are very aware of the concept of a ROI, or return on investment. In business, returns need to be all but guaranteed to make an investment worth while.

Of course, employers consider each potential employee's ROI while determining if they are a good fit for the company. A company needs to feel a sense of confidence that you'll give them returns on the investment they're making. If they don't know this for sure, you won't get the job. Given that, how can an executive prove to a prospective hiring company that he's worth the money? 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. Revenue is one crucial area--show prospects that you turned into sales, major business deals, and other revenue you'd earned for your previous employers.

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. At an executive level, you have to show some numbers that indicate your worth in order to get a company to realize that you'd be a valuable resource for them.

How Productive Was Your Staff?

Businesses are often very concerned with productivity, as you probably are as an executive, and they look for ways to ensure that their employees are earning them as much as possible. An executive who shows how he was able to affect productivity in simple terms stands a good chance of getting a job.

As an example, you can show the time it took you to finish a large project that led to a revenue increase of 3% in a given year. Let's say in simple terms that you were allotted 12 weeks of 40-hour per week shifts at $10/hr for 20 workers to complete a special project. $96,000 is the total for employee time. Let's say that you also invested in training resources of $500 per employee, and software updates that cost $10K but cut the project down to six weeks. If the cost of the project you undertook totaled $68,000, the company saved about $28,000 with a 3 percent revenue increase, and process efficiency improved, allowing your employees to tackle other work 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. If you managed a customer service department, you can point to improvements in customer satisfaction rates. As many companies are concerned with phone support, you might also show improvements in time-per-call or the number of customers your department handled via phone.

Remember, just like on your previous jobs, prospective employers want to know their potential ROI when looking at candidates. To be hired, you'll need to use your executive experience to explain how you'll bring more returns than investment--and since you're used to the terms, if you plan things out before hand, this should be a simple task.