Give Your Resume a Little Action
Posted By Amanda Collins on June 27, 2011
A résumé is a living document and, as such, it needs a little love. As a résumé writer for 15 years, I’ve seen my share of unloved documents, let me tell you! Many people do a bit of a “vomiting on paper” with their résumés in the hopes that the reader will glean some kind of useful nugget from the excess. While that may have been the case in the past, that rarely happens these days in our overcrowded job market.
One way to help your résumé to stand out from the crowd is to give it some action: Use action words.
There are two ways sentences can be constructed: passively or actively. A passive sentence on a résumé usually sounds like:
- Responsible for managing a team of 20 sales associates.
A better way to say this is:
- Managed a team of 20 sales associates.
As I always tell people, “responsible for” just says what you were SUPPOSED to do. However, an action verb connotes that you actually did it. Which impression would you rather share with your readers?
So take some time and review your résumé to make sure you are really telling people what you did by shaking it up with a little action.