Photo by cottonbro studio
Article courtesy of ResumeCoach
- “Managed” shows up on roughly 9.1 million resumes across the United States, accounting for 8.22 percent of those searched, well clear of any rival.
- “Organized” and “accurate” round out the top three, appearing on 7.1 million and 5.3 million resumes, respectively.
- An expert reveals how to make your resume stand out from millions of others
It is easy to find resumes packed with words like “managed” and “organized,” but hard to define exactly what sets one application apart from nine million others.
New research by ResumeCoach analyzed 110 of the most common resume buzzwords on Indeed Resume Search at a national level and ranked them by how often they turn up. The picture is fairly damning: American job seekers, by the millions, are all reaching for the same handful of words.
The 15 words that dominate American resumes
“Managed,” the word that heads up the entire ranking, showed up on roughly 9.1 million resumes, or about one in twelve of all those searched. Everybody from retail shift leaders to C-suite executives reaches for it, and the words behind it in second and third (“organized” at 7.1 million, “accurate” at 5.3 million) are equally vague terms that carry the same problem.
“Collaborated” (4.4 million), “trained” (4.3 million), “efficient” (4.1 million) and “skilled” (4 million) fill fourth through seventh.
“Implemented” (3.6 million) in eighth is the only word near the top of the table that implies a candidate actually built or changed something. “Supported” (3.4 million) and “delivered” (3.1 million) close out the top ten.
Once past the top ten, the numbers begin to taper off more gradually. “Monitored” appears on 2.9 million resumes, followed by “strategic” at 2.6 million. “Established” and “supervised” are tied at 2.4 million each, while “detail-oriented” sits just behind at 2.3 million. “Resolved” and “reliable” round out the ranking, both appearing on 2.2 million resumes.
“When a recruiter sees ‘managed a team of five,’ it raises more questions than it answers,” a spokesperson at ResumeCoach says. “Did that team improve? Deliver faster? Hit targets? That context is almost always missing.
“By the time you get to more specific terms like ‘articulated,’ ‘influenced’ or ‘launched,’ you are down to tens of thousands of uses. That tells us most candidates are describing what they were responsible for, but very few are explaining how they think, communicate or influence.”
What recruiters look for on a resume
Ask anyone who has sat on a hiring panel and the answer is always the same. “When recruiters look at a resume, they want to quickly understand what you’ve done and trust what they’re reading,” the spokesperson says. “As long as you can support your claims, you’re in a good place, but swapping out weaker or overused words (such as ‘managed’ or ‘organized’) for more specific, outcome-led terms can definitely improve your chances of scoring an interview.
“Instead of saying you ‘managed’ a team, show what actually came out of it. Did you reduce costs, increase revenue, launch something new or negotiate a better deal? Those kinds of details are what make a difference.”
Being concise is also important, according to the expert. Don’t be afraid to cut experience that is not relevant to the role, because a shorter resume that says the right things will always beat a longer one that tries to say everything.
“Recruiters are far more interested in what changed because you were there, not phrases that could sit on just about any resume,” the spokesperson says.
Action verbs like “delivered,” “reduced” and “negotiated” are the best way to describe what you did in a role. But remember that if a word would sound awkward in a face-to-face conversation, it probably does not belong on your resume either.
The biggest mistakes to avoid
Here is where a lot of people go wrong. The spokesperson says most employers already take effort as a given, and what they actually want is proof of how it played out: a project finished, a target hit, a specific number that somebody can actually point to.
Listing duties alone, the spokesperson adds, is one of the worst mistakes on any application. If all you have described is what you did each day without once mentioning what changed, a recruiter has no particular reason to keep reading. Recruiters want to know that if you claim a skill, you can show the outcomes that followed.
Length is the other trap. People talk about the traditional two-page limit, and while it does depend on the seniority you are going for, broadly speaking, if you can keep it under that, the recruiter will be happier for it.
Typos and sloppy formatting will get you rejected faster than anything else, and there is really no excuse for either. Show your resume to someone you trust, ideally someone who has worked alongside you, and get them to read it with fresh eyes. You would be surprised how much a second pair of eyes catches.
Methodology:
- A list of 110 words commonly found on resumes was compiled. Each was searched individually on Indeed Resume Search at the national (US-wide) level and the number of resumes carrying that word was recorded.
- Words were then ranked from most to least frequently appearing. Each word’s share of the total was worked out from there.