Whether you’re building an IT support resume or a C.V. for an advanced tech job such as data analytics, power verbs bring your resume to life. They paint a picture for the recruiter or hiring manager by highlighting your skills and accomplishments, affirming your communication skills, and ultimately helping you stand out in a crowd.
Of course, power verbs alone won’t help you land the job. From your work experience to your skills section, from your professional summary to your job descriptions, you need to tailor every element of your cover letter and resume for the job. Your work history needs to be customized to show how you’ve delivered results for previous companies, and how you can use your up-to-date skills to help a prospective employer achieve their strategies.
Where to Insert Power Verbs
In your work history and branding statement, take care to begin each statement or phrase with a power verb. Remember to use present-tense verbs in your profile and qualifications summary and when creating task, responsibility and accomplishment bullets for a current position.
Use past-tense verbs to describe prior positions and experience in your work history. There are literally thousands of verbs to choose from, so feel free to share your favorites. Power verbs are especially helpful when you want to convey how you trained and/or imparted knowledge to your colleagues. For example:
| • Assessed | • Enriched | • Lectured |
| • Adapted | • Enrolled | • Showed |
| • Advised | • Familiarized | • Taught |
| • Demonstrated | • Honed | • Trained |
| • Demystified | • Indoctrinated | • Tutored |
| • Dispensed | • Informed | |
| • Educated | • Instructed |
We have even more power verbs broken down by key categories, including:
- Achievements/Awards
- Communication
- Creativity/Innovation
- Leadership
- Management/Supervisory
- Teamwork
- Technical Work
- User/Technical Support Experience
Don’t Forget Your Technical Terms
While you’re using power verbs to give your work experience a little bit more “oomph,” also consider how you’re deploying technical terms. These are terms specific to your profession; for example, if you’re involved in Java, data, and web development, you’ll want to take care to describe the skills, frameworks, and languages that allowed you to succeed in your previous positions.
As you apply technical terms, re-examine the original job posting and note the skills you know. Make sure those skills find their way into your resume and cover letter, as the recruiter and hiring manager are likely using automated software that will scan for those words. If those terms aren’t present, you’ll raise the chances that the automated systems will reject your application, even if technically you have all the right skills and experience. (It also doesn’t pay to “stuff” your resume and cover letter with keywords, because those systems are also designed to recognize that behavior and reject your materials.)
If you’re unsure of a framework for your resume, take a look at Dice’s extensive list of templates for various tech professional resumes, including business analyst, data analyst, data scientist, DevOps engineer, technical support manager, and many more.
The Role of A.I. in Power Verbs for Resume-Writing
You might be tempted to use a generative A.I. tool such as ChatGPT when crafting your resume and application materials. Dice’s Optimizing Your Tech Career e-book breaks down some of the opportunities and challenges involved in that tactic. If you do use A.I. tools, make sure to give your resulting documents a re-read… and power up any weak verbs by hand.
