Action verbs bolster your achievements and make your writing more engaging. They make a positive impression on recruiters and help you stand out by enabling them to envision you as an achiever.
Recruiters are looking for candidates who can get results. Powerful action verbs help to demonstrate your ability to do exactly that.
Resumes and CVs that don’t utilise action verbs have weaker impacts on recruiters. Generic verbs – such as ‘Managed’ and ‘Delivered’ – are peppered across the majority of resumes. Recruiters see such verbs on resumes all day long. Because they’re so generic and over-used, they are much less effective than unique power verbs.
Here is an example of a resume's achievement that uses generic verbs:
‘Managed a team of six and delivered a sales restructuring project, which increased revenue by 31%.’
And here is the same achievement, this time using powerful action verbs:
‘Orchestrated a project to reconstruct the sales process while leading a team of six, generating a 31% increase in revenue’.
Note the stark difference in the two achievements. The simple use of powerful action verbs drastically improves the quality of the writing.
If you can make use of power verbs on your resume, you’ll stand a much greater chance of impressing recruiters and progressing to the next stage of the application process.
