My resume has received a complete overhaul recently, and is still being tweaked daily. The reason? It is all about the wording.

The day to day duties of a recruiter involve looking at hundreds of resumes for each position they are recruiting for. Most of the qualified applicants will have the same subject matter on their resumes as well. It begins to get boring. Most of the top candidates will figure out a way to have their resume stand out from the hundreds of other resumes out there, and they accomplish this through careful consideration of the wording used on their resumes.

Take a look at your own resume, and see how many times you have used the following words (or any variation of these words)

• Responsible
• Produce
• Refer
• Schedule
• Supply
• Respond
• Achieve
• Represent
• Coordinate
• Communicate

These are the 10 words I have seen the most job descriptions, so my natural tendency should be to reflect those same words multiple times in my resume, right? Wrong. Every respondent is doing the same thing. What the top candidates should do is show or demonstrate their experience to the recruiter, without doing the same thing every body else is doing.

There are enough words for everyone. Get a little creative, choose the words that will best highlight your experience, and leave the job description to the recruiter.