Expressing Your Skill Sets on a Resume – Step #2 Developing Key Language

Now that you have an exhaustive list of your job responsibilities and have prioritized them by the value added to an organization, you have the task of crafting bullet points that stand out to your next employer. This is usually the hardest task and the one people dread the most.

To develop eye-catching statements about your achievements, responsibilities and value added, here are some hints to elevate the language of your resume.

• Review an established colleague’s resume. It can be a student who is a year or two ahead of you or a supervisor or mentor. It will help you to target key jargon to highlight and help you to establish what needs to be prioritized on your resume.
• Have a grasp of power verbs. You should be using a wealth of vocabulary and not reusing words. The power verbs should also represent the key skill sets in your field. For example, if you are in information technology, you should have skills in critical and analytical thinking, detail orientation, and proficiency with key technologies and your resume should use language that points to this. Optimal Resume is a great place to get started.
• Keep your bullets clean and crisp. This means that every word should need to be there. This is not a time for flowery language and long verbose statements. This takes multiple revisions. You need to work to clean up statements and make sure your communicating your point with just what is needed.