11 Power Words That Will Make Any Resume Stand Out

Jobs site ZipRecruiter dug through its database of 3 million resumes to see what recruiters like to see in a resume. ZipRecruiter allows job seekers to upload their resumes, and small businesses, individual employers, and recruiters looking for candidates to rate those resumes on a scale of one to five stars (one being the lowest, five the highest).

It found if you use the below "power words," your likelihood of getting a top rating goes up by 70%.

• Experience• Management• Project• Development• Business• Skill• Professional• Knowledge• Year• Team• Leadership

This finding shows that keyword hacking has uses beyond tailoring your resume to robots. The ZipRecruiter data suggests that humans gravitate to a certain set of vocabulary as well. Of those, ZipRecruiter says that three main themes emerged: 

"... we found that words that implied management skills (not necessarily as a manager: time management is an example of a management skill everyone needs to have), a proactive stance towards working ('responsible,' 'support,' and 'client; speak to that) and problem solving skills ('data,' 'analysis,' and 'operation') were the most highly rated."

Still, you don't want to cram your resume full of keywords. If it looks as if you committed "keyword stuffing" — layering in keywords that don't actually fit your experience — you're making it easy to get your resume discarded.