July 16, 2010, Newsletter Issue #187: Have Your Resume "Act Out"

Tip of the Week

When employers do a resume search, they are flooded with resumes. To make your resume as effective as it can be, use “action words” in your skill or experience descriptions. Action words are verbs that show what action you took to perform that job.



Examples of action words are:

Supervised, Achieved, Researched, Compiled, Organized, Trained, Sold, Initiated, Developed, Conducted, or Generated.



When using action words try to make them result-based, and give specific results such as dollar amounts, piece counts or percentages.



For example, rather than saying you “sold more widgets than any other salesman,” you say “increased the company market share of widgets by 6.8 per cent.” The result of your action is increasing market share by 6.8%.



Another example: Rather than state you “trained others in the operation of the Widget Dehydrator,” state that you “improved the company output of dehydrated widgets by 2000 per week through training employees on the most efficient operation of the Widget Dehydrator.” The result is improving output by 2000 widgets per week.

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