Choose Carefully Your Resume Verbs

We’ve often talked about the vocabulary you should use in your resume to grab your details the attention they deserve, using key, or ‘power’ words to get your suitably across.

The use of such action words or ‘power verbs’ in your resume really is vital and serve to promote your skills and experience much more effectively than without. WHERE you use such words is important also, essentially using them first, next to bullet points as you detail your key skills and achievements under your employment history. This method draws the readers’ eye right to these ‘stand out’ phrases and makes your point powerfully.

Of course, sticking these action verbs into your resume without proper consideration is not the way to go. You might hope it will look good, but if you don’t understand the verbs, or their meanings, you may not have placed them appropriately and this will not reflect well on you. Also, your actual job or career history and industry experience will have a say into which action verbs you use. Many may not be relevant to your personal resume.

The type of action verbs that you pepper your resume with are imperative too. Only you know how formal or casual you can be in your vocabulary , or use the same word ‘differently’ if that’s how things are in your line of work. What do I mean?

For example, a candidate applying for a managerial position will want to make use of words such as "oversaw, developed, improved and reduced", whereas someone looking for a more creative role will want to use words such as "designed, compiled and created".

The best RESUME describes your career and accomplishments by means of action verbs, coupled with the benefit derived from specific actions.

With a carefully thought out statement, you are providing graphic examples of why you are the ideal person for the job; you’ve got what they want, basically – so prove it!

List the action taken in a specific situation, and make it relevant to the organisation; this could be in terms of profit, turnover, sales, morale, cash-flow, reduced staff turn-over, process, anything that has been benefited by the action taken.

Example:

Before - Responsible for sales team covering multiple territories.

After – Effectively managed $1 million business unit, achieving 18% increase in net sales with a team of seventeen employees together with a 32% increase in net profits.

You are giving them the answers to their questions already, make sure to leave them wanting more enough to interview you!

Power verbs to accentuate organisational skills:

Power verbs used to highlight achievements:

Other power verbs: