Your professional resume includes an extensive and relevant list of your responsibilities. These should highlight your experiences relevant to the role and highlight what makes you a suitable applicant. However, when we review our clients’ resumes, we often notice a critical flaw in their resumes: they do not use action verbs.
An action verb is a word that demonstrates what you accomplished or contributed to in your past roles. These emphasize the specific tasks or results you carried out. On resumes, action verbs like developed or analyzed highlight achievements, while non-action verbs like put, did, or had appear passive and less impactful.
In this post, we briefly introduce action verbs and how they should be used on resumes. By simply adding action verbs to your resume, you will greatly strengthen your application and make it much more likely that you will be noticed.
Using Action Carbs on Resumes
As noted, one of the most common mistakes job seekers make when writing a resume is using non-action verbs. While they may feel natural in normal writing, non-action verbs can make your resume sound passive and vague. Employers want to see what you accomplished and achieved rather than just what you did. That’s where action verbs come in.
Action verbs are powerful, specific words that highlight your contributions. They make your achievements clear and give the impression of initiative, energy, and results. Non-action verbs, on the other hand, downplay or blur the impact of your work, making it harder for hiring managers to see your value. This distinction is especially important in education, where responsibilities can overlap and employers need to understand how you stand out.
Consider the difference:
- Non-action verb: Was responsible for lesson planning for middle school math classes.
- Action verb: Designed and implemented engaging math lessons that improved student test scores by 15%.
Notice how the lack of action verbs makes these entries much less influential and powerful compared to the ones above. The first entry only tells us that lesson planning was part of the job. The second shows greater active initiative (designed and implemented) and provides evidence of effectiveness.
- Weak (non-action): Had duties that included supervising students during lunch and recess.
- Stronger (action): Supervised and guided students during lunch and recess, promoting positive social interactions and conflict resolution.
- Weak (non-action): Was in charge of grading assignments and providing feedback.
- Stronger (action): Evaluated student assignments and delivered constructive feedback that supported academic growth.
- Weak (non-action): Helped with after-school tutoring program.
- Stronger (action): Facilitated after-school tutoring sessions, adapting instruction to meet diverse student learning needs.
Notice how the stronger examples use verbs like designed, implemented, supervised, evaluated, and facilitated. These verbs show ownership of your actions and demonstrate the value you brought to your role.
When you revise your resume, look at each bullet point and ask: Does this sentence show what I actively did, or does it simply describe what I was assigned? Replacing non-action verbs with strong action verbs transforms your resume into a document that communicates results and capabilities. In a competitive field like education, where many applicants share similar responsibilities, action verbs help your unique contributions shine.
Conclusion
By consistently using action verbs in your resume, you can make your experiences sound more dynamic. Action verbs will also highlight your accomplishments. Strong verbs help hiring managers quickly see the impact of your work rather than just the duties you performed. If you’d like more support, there are countless resources online with action verb lists, or you can explore our Premium Resume Guide for detailed strategies, examples, and curated lists tailored to job seekers in education.