3 terms you should always have on your resume to target what ‘every organization cares about’

Your resume should be a powerful reflection of your accomplishments. To make your job experiences pack a punch, make sure to start each bullet with a past tense verb that is as specific and actionable as possible, says Ng.

“Led a team of five, coordinated across three departments, designed three landing pages, built, designed, authored and co-wrote, published,” says Ng as some examples, adding that, “even if I don’t continue with the rest of the sentence, you have a mental image of what I did.”

“Accomplished, improved, trained, mentored, managed,” are a few others to consider, says Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster .

While using verbs gives a clear sense of your day-to-day tasks, using specific numbers illustrates what you were able to accomplish and how you helped make things more, better, faster, and so on, for your specific company.

In writing each bullet, ask yourself, how many sales did I make every month? How many hits did our site get after my redesign? How much more productive was our team after I streamlined some of our work-flow processes?

And don’t forget about percentages and growth. “There’s a difference between saying, ‘managed a budget of $10,000,’” says Ng, “and being able to say, ‘raised $10,000, a 25% increase over the prior year.’” Consider comparative ways to present the data and choose the one that best shows the value you’ve been able to bring.