While youre revamping your resume or cover letter or constructing your proof-by-example stories for interviews, youll find you need to watch your word choice. Why? Communication is powerful if the words we use to communicate are powerful. Thats not all it takes, but the right words make for a good beginning.

So as you craft achievement statements or write paragraphs that sell your skills or draft interview responses to knock the employers socks off, consider these suggestions:

• Use verbs in active tense, not passive tense.
• Use verbs that convey power and action.
• Use verbs that claim the highest level of skill or achievement you can legitimately claim.
• Use verbs to accurately describe what you have done on the job.
• Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly, but when you use them, use them well.
• Use nouns that are as specific and as descriptive as possible.
• Use numbers whenever possible.
• Use the most impressive (and still honest) form of the number you use.
• Never lie! It IS NOT worth it. It WILL catch up with you.
• Proofread all your verbs and nouns for agreement, tense and appropriateness.

Here, then, are 175 powerful verbs and phrases to make use of in resumes, cover letters and interviews:

• abated
• abolished
• accelerated
• accomplished
• achieved
• actively participated
• administered
• advanced
• advised
• aggressively analyzed
• applied
• assumed a key role
• authored
• automated
• built
• hired
• closed
• coached
• co-developed
• codirected
• co-founded
• cold called
• collected
• co-managed
• communicated
• completed
• computerized
• conceptualized
• conducted
• consolidated
• contained
• contracted
• contributed
• controlled
• convinced
• coordinated
• cost effectively created
• critiqued
• cut
• dealt effectively
• decreased
• defined
• delivered
• designed
• developed
• developed and applied
• directed
• doubled
• earned
• eliminated
• emphasized
• enforced
• established
• evaluated
• exceeded
• executed
• exercised
• expanded
• expedited
• facilitated
• filled
• focused
• formulated
• fostered
• founded
• gained
• generated
• ground-breaking
• headed up
• helped
• identified
• implemented
• improved
• increased
• initiated
• innovated
• instituted
• instructed
• integrated
• interviewed
• introduced
• investigated
• lectured
• led
• leveraged
• maintained
• managed
• marketed
• motivated
• negotiated
• orchestrated
• organized
• outmaneuvered
• overcame
• oversaw
• penetrated
• performed
• permitted
• persuaded
• planned
• played a key role
• positioned
• prepared
• presented
• prevented
• produced
• profitably
• project managed
• promoted
• proposed
• prospected
• protected
• provided
• published
• quadrupled
• ranked
• received
• recommended
• recruited
• reduced
• removed
• renegotiated
• replaced
• researched
• resolved
• restored
• restructured
• reversed
• satisfied
• saved
• scheduled
• scoped out
• selected
• self-financed
• set up
• sold
• solved
• staffed
• started
• stopped
• streamlined
• substituted
• supervised
• taught
• tightened
• took the lead in
• trained
• trimmed
• tripled
• troubleshooted
• turned around
• upgraded
• yielded

While you certainly can use the list anytime youre looking to say something in a more powerful way, you can also use it to help jog your memory about accomplishments on present and past jobs that you might otherwise overlook. Also, consider using the list to help you refine your resumes and cover letters to be more powerful in their presentation and communication.

Author: Cheryl Lynch Simpson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

What resume format should you use when putting your job accomplishment bullet points together?

Specifically, how should you structure the text in your resume to get the best and biggest positive impact that will result in more interviews?

Hiring managers hire someone because they have a problem that they need solved. Therefore your resume needs to clearly illustrate your accomplishments, proof of the problems that youve solved.

When you are putting your resume together and are typing your bullet points describing each job youve held, remember that youre not putting together a job description.

You need to type your bullet points to describe your accomplishments and achievements, not simply state what you did in that position.

A good way to accomplish this is to structure each point with the following format:

Problem, Action, Result.

Here it is explained in more detail:

Problem: Explain a problem or situation that arose in your job.

Action: Explain the action that you took to deal with and solve the problem or situation described above.

Result: Explain the result of the action you undertook to solve the problem or situation described above.

Specifically, lets say you are a sales manager and you have a group of sales staff who arent meeting their sales quotas. You decide to retrain the staff in sales techniques to improve their sales skills and as a result profitability increased by 15%. Here is how you could structure the bullet point in your resume:

The problem you faced was underachieving sales staff, the action you took was to retrain the staff, and the result was an increase in profitability of 15%.

Doesnt this sound better and more impactful than simply saying Managed sales staff or something similar to this?

Not only does the first example contain far more detail, it uses action verbs such as upskilled and uses specific numbers to describe the number of staff in question and the specific result of the action, an increase in profitability of 15%.

In short, your bullet points should include as much detail as possible and should use action verbs that explain not what just what you did in the job, but what you accomplished.

Hiring managers want to read about your accomplishments not simply a rehash of your job description.

Author: Carl Mueller
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger