Key words for your resume

Resumes typically use a lot of adjectives. The words you choose to describe yourself, your skills and your experience have a significant impact on the way your resume is interpreted so it’s important to select these words wisely. As recruiters, we see hundreds of resumes each week, so ensuring that yours stands out is critical to your success. Some research has been done on key words, and the findings are quite interesting.

Use strong action words

To demonstrate your ability, use action words in the past tense. Rather than saying “my KPIs were…” or “my role was to do XYZ,” you could try words like achieved, improved, created and mentored. You want to show what you can do so make sure your words are strong. Strong statements include what you did, how you did it and the result. “I did X by implementing Y and it achieved Z.

Avoid subjective terms and clichés

Subjective terms and clichés are seen as negative because they don’t convey real information. For instance, don’t say you are ‘results-driven’; show the employer your actual results.” Other words and phrases to avoid include self-motivated and detail-oriented, they are over used. Read more about this here.

Your resume needs to get attention to secure an interview opportunity. If you want to get it right, take a look at some of our other articles that we’ve written on resumes;

Your resume is the only chance you get to make a lasting first impression, so make it a good one.

Good luck!

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