250+ Action Verbs for Your Resume Work Experience

Below, we’ll show you how to write a resume that helps you land more interviews by using action verbs.

ViewsLikes

Our Expert:

Eva Chan

Action words that show creativity & innovation

Creativity and innovation are two valuable soft skills in today’s job market.

If you regularly bring new ideas to your work, use the verbs from this list to emphasize your creative process and show what you’ve achieved:

Build My Resume

Our resume builder can make you a resume in as little as 5 minutes. Pick the template you want, and our software will format everything for you.

Action words that show leadership & management

Whether you supervise a team or manage a project, leadership skills are essential for many jobs.

Use the following verbs on your resume to help show employers that you’re prepared to lead people and manage projects at work.

Action words that show off your accomplishments

To stand out from other applicants, it’s important to effectively describe your accomplishments on your resume. Don’t just describe your job responsibilities: use strong action verbs to show what you achieved instead.

Action words that show research & analytical skills

Many employers are looking for capable researchers with good analytical skills. Choose the right action verbs to show you can effectively collect, analyze, and draw conclusions from data.

Action words that show teamwork & communication skills

The ability to work well on a team is essential for many jobs. But, it’s not effective to write “great communicator” or “possess excellent interpersonal skills” on your resume.

Instead, you should show employers examples of your teamwork and communication skills by using the following action verbs on your resume:

Action words that show organizational skills

From keeping files organized to improving an outdated system or process, organizational skills are some of the most in-demand soft skills because of their universal value in the workplace.

On your resume, use descriptive action verbs that highlight how you can keep things organized and improve your workplace.

Action words that show sales & customer service skills

In client-facing roles, you need superior people skills to meet sales targets while maintaining positive relationships with customers.

When describing your sales and customer service experience on a resume, use the action verbs listed below to show hiring managers you have excellent sales and customer service skills.

Action words that show technical skills

Technical expertise includes knowing programming languages or software, as well as applying these skills to create solutions.

The right action verbs demonstrate not just what tools you know, but how effectively you use them to solve problems, innovate, and deliver value.

How to use action verbs properly

To add more action verbs to your resume, identify where you use passive language such as “responsible for” or boring phrases like “worked on”.

Instead, think about what you accomplished at your job, rather than what you were responsible for. Start each bullet point or sentence with a strong verb that illustrates the actions you took to achieve a particular goal.

Replace generic buzzwords with power words

Sometimes, a carefully-placed resume buzzword that’s common in your industry works well, but it’s important to avoid words and phrases that’ve lost their meaning because of overuse.

Instead, use power words on your resume. Unlike buzzwords, power words have a clear meaning, and are highly relevant to your skills and experience.

To avoid eye-roll-inducing buzzwords, the table below provides helpful resume synonyms to use instead:

Use more action words than adjectives on your resume

A few good resume adjectives can provide additional context to your skills and experience. But too many adjectives on a resume can make you seem insincere, and they don’t show how you applied your key skills.

To strengthen your resume, replace unnecessary adjectives with action verbs.

Use the following table to give you ideas for replacing some of your resume adjectives with more impactful action words:

Where to use strong action verbs on your resume

Using action verbs to describe your experience improves your resume in the following places:

In your work experience bullet points

Your resume’s work experience section is the best place to use action verbs. This section should show what you achieved in previous roles, not just what you were responsible for, which is what action verbs do best.

Take a look at these examples to get a better idea of how to use strong action words in your resume’s experience section:

While this example does mention an accomplishment (customer retention), it’s not a very impactful bullet point. Here’s how to improve this example using action verbs:

This revised bullet point is much more effective because it uses stronger words to emphasize:

• the active role this applicant played in introducing a customer retention program
• the impact of their achievement on the company

Try using our AI bullet point generator to get ideas for your bullet points:

In your resume summary

A resume summary covers your most important experience, achievements, and skills to serve as an introduction and give hiring managers a quick overview of your qualifications.

However, using vague or passive language like “responsible for” or “experienced with” can make your resume summary fall flat.

To make your summary more effective, incorporate a few action verbs when discussing your achievements. This will clarify how your contributions have made a difference in past roles and can potentially make a difference in your next role.

Here’s an example of a high-quality resume summary that uses powerful verbs throughout: