When applying for jobs, you have a small window of opportunity to highlight your skills and experience for hiring managers. Your application is often compared with dozens of others, making it extremely important that your achievements are relevant and memorable.
So word choice matters, especially when you’re describing your work experience.
Action verbs are powerful ‘doing words’ you can use to emphasise the skills and achievements on your CV. They help you present your experience persuasively by highlighting your proactivity and engagement.
Responsible forConducted 15+ interviews per week
Took part inCollaborated with 3 cross-functional teams to create content
For this reason, working action verbs into your CV is a powerful approach for catching the eye of recruiters and applicant tracking systems. This page provides a concise list of impactful action verbs for your CVs, organised by relevant skill or achievement.
Action verbs by skill
The right action verb can help you showcase your soft skills by giving valuable context to your achievements. For example, verbs like ‘led’, ‘collaborated’, and ‘mentored’ indicate leadership experience.
Below, you’ll find great examples of action verbs for describing high-demand skills.
Communication skills
Use these action verbs to show how you shared ideas and helped others understand key messages or updates.
- Advised content creators on SEO best practices
- Deliberated client proposals
- Articulated technical troubleshooting steps clearly to end users
- Engaged with customers via live chat and email
- Expressed brand voice consistently across social media campaigns
- Briefed vendors and staff on logistics and contingency plans prior to events
- Presented monthly variance reports to the finance team
- Consulted with clinic managers to improve patient intake processes
- Verbalised key classroom concepts during revision sessions
Research skills
The verbs below help you show how you found, sorted, and used facts to support your work or decisions.
- Discovered emerging consumer trends through survey data analysis
- Explored user behavior through interviews and usability testing
- Assessed candidate applications against job criteria
- Investigated suspicious activity alerts to identify false positives
- Collected soil and water samples for environmental impact assessments
- Measured product dimensions using precision tools
- Conducted interviews and administered questionnaires for a cognitive behavior study
- Monitored vital signs and reported anomalies to nursing staff
- Examined claim documentation to identify discrepancies
- Scrutinised financial statements for compliance issues
- Experimented with ingredient ratios to improve shelf life of a line of baked goods
- Tested web and mobile applications for bugs and performance issues
Teamwork
Try these verbs when writing about how you worked with others to reach shared goals or support group efforts.
- Aided team leads in streamlining daily project updates
- Liaised with staff to align goals across three branches
- Coordinated group tasks to meet weekly sprint goals
- Merged team workflows to cut delays by 25%
- Collaborated with peers to finish QA tests on time
- Networked with teams to share best service practices
- Connected marketing and sales for joint outreach push
- Synchronised team calendars to boost task coverage
- Enlisted support from peers to meet event deadlines
- Synergised team ideas for a new user help guide
- Harmonised cross-team tasks to reduce overlap
Customer service
These verbs are useful for showing how you’ve used your customer service skills helped people, solved issues, and made sure clients felt heard and cared for.
- Appeased upset clients with fast, clear solutions
- Attended to 30+ daily client calls with care
- Satisfied user needs by offering quick fixes
- Nurtured client trust through follow-up calls
- Served as first point of contact for walk-ins
- Rectified billing errors to ensure client trust
- Relieved customer stress during high wait times
- Supervised desk staff to improve guest service
Leadership
Use the following verbs to show how you led, guided, or inspired others toward a goal.
- Led a 6-person team to complete audits on time
- Directed shift plans to meet daily store targets
- Spearheaded a new filing system for faster access
- Motivated staff to exceed weekly sales goals
- Empowered team to solve issues without delays
- Guided new hires through onboarding tasks
- Delegated roles to speed up task completion
- Championed peer-led training for new tools
Analytical skills
These verbs help show how you used your analytical skills to spot trends, find causes, or make good choices.
- Hypothesised trends from past sales for forecast model
- Evaluated site data to suggest layout changes
- Demystified user logs to find root error cause
- Examined support tickets to flag key issues
- Clarified budget gaps using monthly reports
- Interpreted survey results to guide outreach
- Delved into logs to trace login failure rates
- Itemised costs to reveal areas for savings
- Dissected app flows to locate user drop-offs
- Probed feedback for clues to service delays
- Distilled test results into clear insights
- Reviewed reports to confirm data accuracy
- Inquired into delays via vendor calls
- Studied usage stats to suggest feature cuts
Action verbs by achievement type
When discussing your past achievements, action verbs sharpen your descriptions, giving them added context and scale. The following verbs can help employers quickly understand your strengths and effectiveness.
Training and mentoring
Use these verbs to show how you taught others, gave advice, or helped them build new skills.
- Trained staff on new CRM in under one week
- Educated clients on safe product use steps
- Mentored junior staff through first project
- Coached peers to improve service scripts
- Demonstrated tool use during live sessions
- Tutored three interns in data entry skills
- Guided 3 new hires through daily routines
- Enabled team to use tracking tools with ease
- Instructed staff on logbook procedures
- Enlightened peers on app privacy settings
Settling deals
These action verbs highlight how you reached agreements, made deals, or helped both sides find common ground.
- Bargained vendor rates down by 15%
- Brokered a deal between 2 key partners
- Clinched £50K deal after 2-week pitch
- Closed 10+ sales monthly with clear follow-up
- Arbitrated contract terms between teams
- Conferred with clients to align project scope
- Secured new supplier for faster deliveries
- Finalised service terms with legal approval
- Confirmed deal details before project launch
Managing people or projects
Use the verbs below to describe how you led teams or kept tasks on track from start to finish.
- Captained 5-person crew on site rollout project
- Oversaw project from kickoff to delivery
- Facilitated meetings to align cross-team goals
- Ran weekly syncs to track project steps
- Guided interns through full project cycle
- Steered launch team through tight deadlines
- Headed rebrand project across four teams
- Inspired staff to meet stretch goals early
Managing money and financial targets
These verbs help show how you handled budgets, tracked spending, or hit money goals.
- Budgeted £10K for team tools with no overage
- Forecasted monthly spend to guide purchase plans
- Appraised costs before vendor selection
- Valued assets for internal finance review
- Audited team expenses to ensure compliance
- Balanced monthly accounts with 100% accuracy
- Allocated funds across five active projects
- Reconciled invoices with account records
- Projected Q4 costs using YTD spend data
- Reduced office spend by 18% in six months
Solving employee problems
Try these verbs to show how you listened, worked with others, and solved staff issues with care and fairness.
- Negotiated shift swaps to meet team needs
- Mediated peer conflict to restore teamwork
- Promoted open talks during staff check-ins
- Persuaded staff to adopt new feedback tools
- Corresponded with staff to solve pay issues
Developing new skills
Use these verbs to describe how you picked up, built, or improved your own skills at work.
- Acquired new Excel skills for faster reports
- Learned CRM basics to support the sales team
- Adapted to new tools during team rollout
- Enhanced typing speed through daily drills
- Cultivated design skills via side projects
- Expanded product knowledge through training
- Mastered task tracker to boost output
- Refined report writing with peer feedback
- Upgraded workflow using new time tools
- Applied SQL to improve data sorting
Handling crises
These verbs show how you acted fast, stayed calm, and solved tough problems under stress.
- Resolved ticket backlog within two days
- Navigated system outage with 0 data loss
- Mitigated risk by flagging early issues
- Stabilized service after tool failure
- Addressed client complaints within 24 hours
- Contained bugs before they reached users
- Responded to alerts with rapid triage steps
- Recovered data lost in sync error
- De-escalated team tension during deadline rush
- Acted fast to restore server access
Verbs to avoid on your CV
The main benefit of using action verbs on a CV is that they clearly state your role and responsibilities in each previous achievement.
However, the following verbs lack that specificity. Keep these verbs off your CV:
- Worked on
- Participated in
- Contributed to
- Assisted
- Helped
- Supported
You can always find more compelling CV words than these examples to describe your achievements.
If you’re not sure what vocabulary to use, try to identify the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of your achievement:
- What was your role in making the achievement happen? For example, were you a team leader, researcher?
- How did you make the achievement come about? Did you support others? Lead an initiative? Introduce a new technology or way of doing something?
Use the context of your achievements to replace weak, passive verbs with active language that makes your experience stand out.
Or alternatively, upload the first draft of your job application to a CV maker that can suggest more compelling vocabulary to spice up your application.
[CTA – CV maker]
Frequently asked questions about action verbs for CVs
Here are answers to three more questions related to proper CV writing:
Should I use present or past tense when using action verbs in my CV?
You should use both the present and past tense when using action verbs on your CV:
- Use the present tense in your personal statement and when describing the responsibilities of your current job
- Use the simple past tense to describe your achievements
Here’s a personal statement using the present tense:
Social Media Specialist with a BA in Marketing from Nottingham Trent University. Possess 2+ years of freelance experience leveraging social listening software, keyword research, and campaign planning to boost social media presence for consumer-oriented SMEs. Seeking a Social Media position with an active role in content creation and developing social media strategies.
The simple past tense (e.g., ‘I received praise’) is normally the appropriate tense to use when describing achievements or past jobs because it describes completed past actions.
Here’s how the simple past tense looks on a CV work experience entry:
ACTIVEL | Derby
Customer Service Representative, Dec 20XX – Jan 20XX
- Handled 100+ inbound calls per day, maintaining a 97% customer satisfaction rating
- Boosted customer retention rate by 15% by identifying customer needs and providing personalised product recommendations
- Upsold new products and promoted exclusive officers, contributing to a 10% increase in quarterly sales
- Consistently exceeded performance targets, achieving and maintaining a first-call resolution rate of 95%
Can I use action verbs in my cover letter as well?
Yes, you can (and should!) use action verbs in your cover letter.
Using action verbs in your cover letter makes your writing more engaging and impactful. Aside from making your vocabulary more varied and interesting, action verbs tell the reader how you achieved something.
Because action verbs are more descriptive, they’re ideal for highlighting your expertise on your cover letter:
PolySpeak needs interpreters who are able to think quickly and adapt to different contexts and registers.
As a freelance interpreter for Face-to-Face, I accompanied clients from various backgrounds to medical appointments, adapting my communication style to reflect specific needs and cultural taboos.
The action verbs ‘accompanied’ and ‘adapting’ tells us what kind of professional relationship the applicant had with their clients, and highlights valuable soft skills like empathy and customer service.
To learn more about using power words in your cover letter, look at good cover letter examples online to see how other applicants make word choices.
Should I use first-person pronouns on my CV?
You shouldn’t use the first-person pronoun ‘I’ on your CV. Because you write your CV about yourself and your achievements, first-person pronouns can make your CV sound dull and repetitive.
For example, if you start every bullet point with the word ‘I’, your action verbs won’t stand out and your achievements will appear less diverse.
