The Death of the Verb
You and I have both heard the typical line from career counselors, “use power verbs in your resume”. Right? They’ve even given us lists and lists of verbs to begin sentences like:
- Managed team of 10 engineers in highly competitive RFP process
- Resolved difficult customer service issue for high stakes sale
- Safeguarded company position through advanced marketing strategy
The problem with all of these verbs is that online, verbs are not as powerful as nouns.
Thanks to search engines, and by extension, resume crawling software that HR departments use to pre-filter candidates, using the right nouns can either get you a job or keep you in the unemployment line.
The New Rules of Resume Language
I’m not suggesting that you pack in as many nouns that relate to your field as possible. Keep it real, and change the focus from verbs to nouns.
Careful. If you take this too far, your online resume might look like this:
Manager, team player and results oriented marketing professional with 10 years experience managing, leading teams and running advertising for large companies that have managers and teams….
Make sure to write for people, but make sure to use the right combination of nouns. Too many nouns get red flagged and discarded. Sentences that don’t make sense are also thrown out.
Where Do I Find my Nouns
Because you are targeting specific jobs at specific companies, no one can give you a list. There are many tools to help you, however, but the best one comes directly from the company you are targeting!
Here are the steps I tell clients to grow their noun list:
- Collect 5-10 job postings from the company and/or position you are looking for (hmmm I guess Job Boards are good for 1 thing!)
- Highlight the nouns that seem to be recurring over and over again
- Jot down the nouns with the highest occurrences, make a list of 10.
Now you know what words to weave into your resume for your target company.
Related Articles:
- Top 5 Sources of Finding Keywords for Your Social Media Profile I previously wrote about the death of the verb and...
- Online Resume Help- What Not to Include? Hi Joshua, I’ve been working at a high-end boutique in...
- Social Media Guidelines for Your Online Job Search Social Media can be a real time sink. There is...
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good tip, and I Stumbled it for you, Joshua. You’re going a bit far in calling for the death of the verb – which is still more important on a written resume – but no question, good nouns are more likely to get you found online.
Jacob Share´s last blog ..The One Thing Your Personal Brand Must Have to Work
Thanks Jacob for your comment. Yes, “death of the verb” is a bit of a hyperbole, I agree with you that there needs to be a balance between verbs and nouns. We are now writing for both humans and robots. But I got your attention didn’t I