As unemployment keeps rising, making your resume look as great as possible becomes more important than ever. Executives, in particular, need to keep up with resume-writing trends to avoid missing out on career opportunities. After all, the higher up the career ladder you climb, the more serious your competition gets. Power verbs can help you write a truly winning executive resume. So here’s what you need to know about them.
What Are Power Verbs?
Power verbs, which you may also have heard of as “action verbs,” are used in resumes at the beginning of every bullet point. They mostly belong in the resume summary and experience section but can also be used in other resume parts.
As you’ve probably noticed, including “I” in every line of your resume is not common. The recruiter or hiring manager reading it will understand that everything the resume says is about you anyway. Instead, the standard that most job seekers follow these days implies formatting bullet points as follows:
- Oversaw the team of five designers through all project stages, from planning to completion and evaluation
- Assisted the head of the HRD department in developing innovative performance evaluation methods
- Increased the agency’s CSAT by 20% in less than six months
As you can see, all the bullet points begin with a verb that communicates the job seeker’s input in their company’s success. That’s what action or power verbs are. Don’t neglect them unless you want to turn a recruiter off and make them toss away your resume in the “nope” pile.
Why Should Executives Use Action Verbs in Their Resumes?
The number one reason why using a variety of power verbs in your resume is to show your potential employers that you’re a doer. If you look at the samples from professional resume writers, you’ll find quite a few action verbs. That’s because executives are expected to be good at taking responsibility and making quick and efficient decisions. Verbs communicate this well.
Also, using a variety of power verbs shows that a job seeker has a rich vocabulary and, more importantly, creates an impression that they have a lot of different skills (which may or may not be the case in reality). Instead, if every bullet point on your experience section begins with completed or worked with, it looks like you’re a one-trick pony, even if that isn’t true.
Finally, power verbs can help your resume get through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The software allows recruiters to filter the job applications they receive and spend their time reading only the most relevant ones. To pass an ATS, a resume must include all the keywords, such as the proper names of positions from the experience section and correctly worded skills. But power verbs can help it pass as well.
What Career Advice Experts and Recruiters Think
We’ve talked to many career advice experts, recruiters, and hirings managers. Almost all (80%) admitted that they look out for power verbs when looking through a candidate’s resume. A few of them said that when a candidate uses a variety of action verbs, it might affect their opinion and increase their interest in the candidate.
Also, about one-half of the career and hiring professionals we’ve surveyed revealed that they appreciate it when candidates use action verbs because it helps them read through resumes faster. When the right word is placed at the beginning of the bullet point, an experienced recruiter can predict what goes after, which speeds up the process.
As a job seeker, you should consider what recruiters and hiring managers think. Even very qualified, top-level executives face fierce competition. You don’t want to miss out on an exceptional job opportunity just because you didn’t bother to read up on power verbs, do you?
Power Verbs for Executives
Luckily, there are lists of the best power verbs for all industries and job levels, including executives. So even if you have no experience using them in a resume, you’ll have no problem learning how to choose and place them correctly. Here are a few to begin with—select the ones that match your skills and experience.
- To describe one’s leadership accomplishments: chair, coach, mentor, lead, direct, guide, head, run, monitor, oversee
- To communicate one’s strategic thinking orientation: build, develop, design, generate, create, conceptualize, construct, draft, formulate
- To articulate one’s communication-related skills and responsibilities: collaborate, negotiate, listen, formulate, share, coordinate, facilitate
- To show one’s analytical mindset: forecast, plan, research, gather, compile, document, analyze, quantify
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Once you look at the draft of your experience (or the older version of your resume), you’ll instantly come up with dozens of appropriate power verbs that match your qualifications and accomplishments.
A Final Tip: Don’t Go Overboard
One more thing. A common mistake many job seekers who’ve just discovered action verbs make is overdoing them. They try to find unique power verbs and fill their resumes to the brim. But our survey shows that recruiters and hiring managers find excessive creativity annoying.
It’s fine to try to find a couple of power verbs that most other job seekers in your industry don’t have on their resumes. But if you look at your experience section and suddenly realize that it makes it seem like you’re showing off your ability to use a thesaurus, rewrite it. No employer will look at your use of words like abnegate and think, “Wow, that’s exactly the executive I’ve been looking for!”
An Afterword
Power verbs make any resume better. So if you work in a competitive industry or are applying for a sought-after executive position, make sure you’ve used a lot of them and done so correctly. Action verbs suggest that the job seeker is a doer, increase the readability of a resume, and give you a chance to show off your vocabulary a bit. Most career advice experts agree that using power verbs is a great idea (as long as you keep your creativity under control).