714+ terms · 32+ role packs

Find the words your role actually uses.

Search by role, tool, or skill. Copy a relevant set, then use each term only where your real experience proves it.

Hard and soft skillsATS phrases in contextCopyable example bullets

12

Industries

32+

Roles

714+

Terms

How recommendations are selected

Browse by Industry

Power Action Verbs by Category

Start every bullet point with a strong verb. Click to copy, then pair with quantified results.

Leadership

(12 verbs)

Spearheaded a cross-functional team of 12 to deliver a $2M product launch 3 weeks ahead of schedule

Directed engineering operations across 3 global offices, managing 45+ engineers

Orchestrated company-wide digital transformation initiative impacting 500+ employees

Championed adoption of CI/CD pipelines, reducing deployment failures by 73%

Mobilized a task force of 8 to resolve critical production outage within 4 hours

Technical

(12 verbs)

Engineered a real-time data pipeline processing 10M+ events/day using Kafka and Spark

Architected a microservices platform serving 5M daily active users with 99.99% uptime

Automated manual QA workflows, reducing testing time from 8 hours to 45 minutes

Deployed containerized applications to AWS EKS, reducing infrastructure costs by 40%

Integrated third-party payment gateway processing $2M+ monthly transactions

Communication

(10 verbs)

Articulated complex technical decisions to C-suite stakeholders, securing $5M R&D budget

Negotiated vendor contracts worth $1.2M annually, achieving 18% cost reduction

Collaborated with Product, Design, and Engineering to launch 3 major features per quarter

Mediated cross-team conflicts during M&A integration, maintaining 95% employee retention

Facilitated 50+ sprint retrospectives, driving continuous improvement across 4 scrum teams

Achievement

(10 verbs)

Accomplished 150% of annual sales quota, generating $3.2M in new business revenue

Exceeded KPI targets for 8 consecutive quarters, ranking #1 among 50 account managers

Maximized ad spend ROI by 220% through A/B testing and audience segmentation

Surpassed fundraising goal by 35%, securing $8M in Series A financing

Delivered 12 product releases on schedule and under budget in FY2025

Analysis

(10 verbs)

Analyzed 5 years of customer churn data, identifying 3 key retention drivers

Assessed market opportunity for new product line, projecting $10M TAM

Forecasted quarterly revenue within 2% accuracy using predictive models

Evaluated 15 vendor platforms, selecting solution that reduced costs by 30%

Diagnosed root cause of 40% conversion drop, recovering $1.5M in lost revenue

Creative

(8 verbs)

Designed responsive UI components used across 8 product surfaces, serving 2M+ users

Conceptualized brand identity refresh that increased brand recall by 45%

Crafted email marketing sequences achieving 32% open rate (industry avg: 18%)

Curated content strategy driving 150K organic monthly visitors (+200% YoY)

Innovated product feature using generative AI, adopted by 60% of users within first month

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Browse by industry

Keyword sets for all 12 industries

Each industry has its own page with role-by-role hard skills, soft skills, ATS terms, certifications, and action verbs shown inside real bullet examples.

How to use them

A keyword on its own does nothing

Keyword lists are scored, but a term sitting in a skills block carries far less than the same term inside a bullet that shows what you did with it. The pattern below is the one that survives both the parser and the recruiter.

The bullet pattern

[action verb] + [what you did] + [by how much] + [why it mattered]

Weak

Managed a team and handled the payment module.

Stronger

Rebuilt the checkout payment module, cutting failed transactions by 67% and recovering roughly Rs. 80 lakh in monthly volume.

When you do not have an exact figure, use a range or an honest approximation — “around 20%”, “50–75 accounts”. An invented precise number is the one thing here that can cost you the interview it wins.

Which numbers carry weight

  • Revenue or cost, in the currency the employer reports in (Rs. or $)
  • Time reduction — hours saved, cycle time, turnaround
  • Volume — users, accounts, patients, tickets, parts, students
  • Quality — defect rate, error rate, accuracy, NPS, CSAT
  • Scale of responsibility — team size, budget, territory, sites

Freshers have all five available from projects, internships, college events and part-time work. “No experience” almost always means “experience not yet counted”.

Action verbs

Five verb families, and when each is honest

Leadership

Spearheaded · Orchestrated · Championed · Steered · Mobilised

Use when you owned the outcome, not when you attended the meeting.

Engineering

Architected · Engineered · Automated · Optimised · Deployed

Each implies a different scope. "Automated" claims a process; "optimised" claims a measured before and after.

Commercial

Negotiated · Accelerated · Revitalised · Streamlined · Converted

These need a number attached or they read as inflation.

Analysis

Quantified · Diagnosed · Forecasted · Benchmarked · Audited

The strongest family for freshers: they describe work you can prove from a project.

Creative

Pioneered · Reimagined · Conceptualised · Prototyped · Curated

Pair with the artefact — a link, a file, a shipped design — or drop the verb.

Construction & real estate

RERA Compliance · BOQ · Tender Management · Site Supervision · Property Valuation · AutoCAD

Sector terms that sit outside the twelve industries above. Quantify at project scale: “handed over a Rs. 50 Cr residential block two months ahead of programme”.

How many resume keywords should I use?

There is no target count, and adding more past the point of accuracy makes a resume worse rather than better. Match the terms in the job description you are applying to — usually eight to twelve that genuinely describe your experience — and place each one inside a bullet that shows the work, not only in a skills list. A resume that repeats a term six times in a list and never demonstrates it reads as keyword stuffing to a recruiter and adds nothing for a parser that already matched it once.

Do resume keywords need to match the job description exactly?

For the terms the employer is screening on, yes — match the wording. Applicant tracking systems match strings, so 'JavaScript' and 'JS', or 'Accounts Receivable' and 'AR', are not always treated as the same term. Use the job description's own phrasing for skills, tools, certifications and job titles where it truthfully describes your experience, and keep a synonym nearby in the same bullet for the human reader. Never add a term for a skill you do not have; the interview will find it.

What resume keywords should a fresher use with no work experience?

Use the tools, methods and subjects you can demonstrate from coursework, projects, internships and college activities, and name them as specifically as a working professional would. A BCA fresher writes 'SQL, Java, REST APIs, Git, JUnit' rather than 'programming'; a diploma mechanical fresher writes 'vernier caliper, micrometer, GD&T, AutoCAD, preventive maintenance' rather than 'workshop skills'. Then attach each to a project bullet with a number in it — a dataset size, a defect count, an event headcount. Specificity, not seniority, is what separates fresher resumes.

Where should keywords go on a resume?

Spread them across four places rather than concentrating them in one. The professional summary carries your target role title and two or three defining skills. The skills section carries the tools and technologies as a scannable list. The experience and project bullets carry the same terms in context, showing what you did with each. The education and certification section carries qualification names, licence numbers and certification titles exactly as the issuing body writes them. A term that appears in the skills list and nowhere else is the weakest form of a keyword.

Looking for a resume format rather than a keyword list? Start from resume formats by role and qualification, or check an existing resume with the free resume checker.