Stop Saying You “helped” on Your Resume (and Use These Verbs Instead)
If you’re in the job market ( or maybe soon ), it’s worth carefully examining your choice of verbs on your resume. While humility is a valuable soft skill that conveys emotional intelligence in the workplace, it has no place in a document that highlights your career accomplishments. Your resume is your brief chance to stand out from hundreds of other candidates, and it should be filled with powerful action verbs that convey agency and influence, not those that put you in the position of “assistant.”
Why You Shouldn’t Say You “Helped”
Recruiters and hiring managers can receive hundreds of applications for the same position. According to a 2018 Eye Tracking study by Ladders, Inc. , “The average initial time to review a candidate’s resume is just 7.4 seconds.” You have so little time to impress, and your achievements at work must be noticed. The use of weak or passive verbs (think: helped , used, contributed, kept) can ” undermine the strength and effectiveness of your resume ” and cause the hiring manager to drop your resume faster than you can say you “participated in the best in class.” initiatives.”
Why Use Powerful Action Verbs Instead
In an Instagram post, Brooklyn-based tech recruiter Alicia Whitney urged job seekers to “stop downplaying” the important things they’ve done in their careers and provided examples of “verbs you can use on your resume instead of “helped” or “contributed.” because you’ve done so much more than that… We often naturally undermine ourselves and downplay our accomplishments, but your resume is the time to brag.”
Among her main options were: Done, Revised, Identified, Produced, Introduced, Enabled, Achieved, Delivered, Partnership, Led, Reviewed, “Enabled”, “Completed”, “Supported ” and “Resolved “. She stressed that this is just a short list, but a quick Google search for ” resume verbs ” will turn up thousands of results. (It happened, and our favorites include: Developed, Launched, Powered, Powered, Lead, Commissioned, Established, Outperformed, Controlled, and Pioneered —among countless others.)
Indeed , echoed this sentiment, stating that action verbs don’t just help an app shine: “They can also help job seekers pass software screening that filters out the best candidates.” Consider this example :
Lacks power and clarity: “Hold weekly status meetings to share customer updates.”
Empowered and detailed: “Chaired weekly status meetings to report growth in agency revenue.”
The transition to a power verb and a more detailed description (with facts, data, numbers, and symbols like “$” ) makes the contribution more powerful and impressive. Because why say you “took care of day-to-day activities and long-term projects” when you could say you “used key data to increase your monthly sales by $10,000”?
A note about verb tense
It is also important to keep the tense of the verb constant throughout. The past tense is acceptable for all verbs, although you can describe your experience at your current job using the present tense. Be careful not to mix and match verb tenses within the same set of list items—all verb tenses must agree for any given role.