After having written more than 10,000 resumes and telling people constantly that there are more verbs out there than managed and developed, I decided to put pen to paper (or let my fingers do the walking on the keyboard in this case) to give you some help with other verbs. Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing wrong with managed or developed. The issue is that when writing a résumé, people use them all the time – I mean in every line. You want to engage the reader, not help the person lapse into a coma. I realize that these don’t exactly correlate. I want to give you some ideas. Without further ado, here is a list (albeit a short list) of alternative verbs that you should consider.

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You should also definitely check out Thesaurus.com or you can try out the very cool visualthesaurus.com where you will find a plethora, myriad, a veritable cornucopia of enticing, invigorating, and all around exciting words that will send sparks flying through your brain! These tools will give you numerous choices of synonyms for commonly used words. It doesn’t only apply to verbs folks; it applies to all words in the English language. The only caveat that you need to be mindful of is that some words may “be” synonyms but do not really convey the meaning of the original word. Sometimes it takes a little digging, but I can assure you – it’s worth it; and will spice up your resume. That’s a sample of my mind origami for the written word. Do you want the whole shebang? The entire kit and kaboodle? The kitchen sink? I will be happy to share more with you. All you have to do is email me at dwheatman@resumesdonewrite.com.

Happy resume writing!