Action verbs help you portray your professional accomplishments and experience in a vivid and interesting way. Most hiring managers only spend a few seconds reading each resume that they receive, so using action verbs can help capture their attention and encourage them to continue reading your entire resume – which can boost your chances of scoring an interview.
Not sure how to incorporate action verbs into your resume? It can be helpful to start with a resume template, and then follow these tips to create a compelling, exciting resume:
Tailor your resume to each job opening
Employers want to know that you have the skills and experience necessary to contribute value to their company, and there’s no better way to demonstrate this than by tailoring your resume to each job opening. Look for keywords and phrases in the job description that highlight what exactly the employer is looking for, and mention applicable keywords in your resume by pairing them with an action verb.
For example, if the employer is looking for someone who has leadership experience, you could write on your resume that you “mentored three junior associates and supervised a team of twelve,” where ‘mentored’ and ‘supervised’ are action verbs.
Using language from the job description and touching on as many of the requirements as possible will not only create a powerful case for the employer to hire you, but it will also help your resume pass applicant tracking system (ATS) scans, which is often the first step to getting your resume into the hands of an actual human hiring manager.
Quantify your achievements
You can make your action verb/accomplishment statements even more powerful by quantifying your achievements using numbers and data. In the example above, specifying the number of people that you mentored and supervised shows that you can handle significant leadership duties. Alternatively, you could use percentages to quantify your successes, such as that you “boosted sales by 50% over 6 months.” This phrase uses an action verb (‘boosted’), outlines an accomplishment, and quantifies the achievement with numerical data.
Avoid passive language
The goal of resume action verbs is essentially to avoid passive language, which can come off as dull or as if your career is something that has happened to you rather than something that you made happen. So, swap out passive language for more compelling active language wherever possible.
For example, rather than saying “overhead was reduced,” you might say that you “decreased overhead costs by 50% by implementing more efficient shipping practices.” As a general rule, the subject receives the action with passive voice and performs the action with active voice.
Examples of action verbs
Finally, here are some examples of strong action verbs to consider adding to your resume, grouped by the message that you want to convey:
To describe team player ability:
- Assimilated
- Collaborated
- Encouraged
- Partnered
To describe leadership ability:
- Authorized
- Directed
- Facilitated
- Implemented
- Mentored
- Supervised
To show communication abilities:
- Advocated
- Authored
- Mediated
- Negotiated
- Persuaded
Instead of saying ‘achieved’:
- Accomplished
- Boosted
- Delivered
- Expedited
- Enhanced
- Generated
- Managed
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