One of the harshest realities about the world of recruitment is that when faced with a CV, a typical recruitment consultant or HR manager will make a judgement call on that CV within a matter of seconds. You may have spent hours creating what you feel is the perfect CV and then within no time at all, it gets discarded and put on the rejected pile straight away.
One of the best ways though that you can ensure that your CV is looked at for longer and hopefully makes it to the shortlisted pile is through the words that you use. We’ve outlined today some of our top tips on the best words to use in your CV.
Use action words
When an employer looks at your CV, they want to see evidence that you can really offer them something and that you have proven achievements elsewhere in your working history. The best way of conveying this on your CV is by using action words. These “power” words and phrases like Managed, Developed, Led, Implemented all serve to show real action in work that you did.
They all are positive words which in turn help provide a real positive impression of you. Of course, don’t simply use these words if you can’t actually back it up with real experience!

Industry specific words
Hopefully if you have followed our previous advice, you will be tailoring your CV for the particular job you are applying for, rather than simply sending a generic CV you created for all jobs. In doing this you should therefore ensure that you use words that are relevant to the particular market sector or industry. Industry specific language, jargon and acronyms can all help to make you appear to be a viable candidate. Just don’t make the mistake of filling your CV with acronyms at the expense of all other content!

Look at the job advertisement
If you need some advice on words or phrases to use, then look no further than the actual job advertisement. Not only will this show you the criteria and key skills that the employer is looking for, but it will also show you the type of terminology that they actually use to describe things. For example, Customer Service may be referred to as Customer Care or Sales may be referred to as Business Development. If you use the words and phrases that the employer uses, you stand a much better chance of your CV matching up to their criteria.

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