If you’re involved in the tech industry in any capacity, much of your day is probably devoted to technical work of some kind. When you’re applying for new jobs, you want to make sure your resume and other application materials not only express the full range of your technical skills, but do so in a way that shows your true impact. To that end, it’s helpful to utilize power verbs to describe your technical work.
Preparing Your Resume
If you’re writing any kind of application for technical work, make sure to start off by consulting the original job posting. Note the technical skills mentioned by the employer; insert any that you’ve mastered into your resume. This is because many organizations rely on automated systems to scan resumes, which check to see if certain keywords—like skills from the original job posting—are mentioned in the resume. If those keywords aren’t present, your application might be rejected long before it lands in front of a human being (who will evaluate you by other criteria).
How to Use Action Verbs in Your Experience Section
Next, use power verbs and assertive language in the experience section of your resume. These will help convey your true impact, affirm your communication skills, and land you the job. For example:
- Resolved several mission-critical bugs that prevented company from launching new services, allowing our revenue to double by the end of FY 2022.
- Shipped annual updates to our key product that earned high scores from our users and resulted in significant engagement gains (up 150% y/y)
- Restructured our existing tech team to better track and ticket critical issues. Monitored and improved all team performance.
Always remember to use present tense verbs in your profile and qualifications summary and when creating task, responsibility and accomplishment bullets for a current position. Use past-tense verbs to describe prior positions and experience in your work history.
Power Verbs for Technical Work Examples
With that in mind, here are some key technical terms you can use to fully convey your impact in technical roles:
| • Accelerated | • Equipped | • Qualified |
| • Added | • Evaluated | • Quality Assured |
| • Adopted | • Expunged | • Ranked |
| • Aggregated | • Extended | • Realigned |
| • Analyzed | • Extracted | • Rebooted |
| • Applied | • Extrapolated | • Rebuilt |
| • Assembled | • Fabricated | • Reconciled |
| • Authenticated | • Finalized | • Reconstructed |
| • Automated | • Fine-Tuned | • Recovered |
| • Backed-up | • Formatted | • Rectified |
| • Balanced | • Functionalized | • Re-engineered |
| • Blocked | • Grouped | • Refreshed |
| • Boosted | • Hosted | • Reinforced |
| • Branched | • Identified | • Rehabilitated |
| • Bridged | • Implemented | • Released |
| • Built | • Initialized | • Remodeled |
| • Bundled | • Installed | • Replicated |
| • Calculated | • Integrated | • Restored |
| • Calibrated | • Isolated | • Retooled |
| • Certified | • Launched | • Retrieved |
| • Changed | • Licensed | • Retrofitted |
| • Checked | • Linked | • Revamped |
| • Classified | • Loaded | • Revised |
| • Cleaned | • Maintained | • Road mapped |
| • Cleansed | • Manufactured | • Rolled out |
| • Cleared | • Mapped | • Rotated |
| • Coded | • Mechanized | • Routed |
| • Collocated | • Merged | • Safeguarded |
| • Computed | • Migrated | • Salvaged |
| • Computerized | • Mined | • Scanned |
| • Configured | • Mirrored | • Scoped |
| • Consolidated | • Mobilized | • Scrubbed |
| • Constructed | • Modeled | • Secured |
| • Corrected | • Modified | • Selected |
| • Debugged | • Moved | • Sequenced |
| • Deciphered | • Networked | • Solved |
| • Decoded | • Neutralized | • Stabilized |
| • Dedicated | • Operated | • Standardized |
| • Defended | • Optimized | • Straddled |
| • Delivered | • Overhauled | • Systematized |
| • Deployed | • Packaged | • Tested |
| • Digitized | • Patched | • Toggled |
| • Discovered | • Penetrated | • Traced |
| • Dispatched | • Pinpointed | • Transitioned |
| • Distributed | • Prevented | • Updated |
| • Duplicated | • Prioritized | • Upgraded |
| • Enabled | • Processed | • Validated |
| • Engineered | • Programmed | • Verified |
| • Enhanced | • Protected | • Virtualized |
| • Eradicated | • Prototyped | • Web-enabled |
| • Estimated | • Provisioned |
A Note on Using A.I. in Resume Writing
When you’re applying for multiple jobs, it’s tempting to use generative A.I. tools such as ChatGPT to rapidly craft resumes and application materials. If you go this route, it’s very important to review any A.I. output and tweak it as much as you can by hand. Dice’s Optimizing Your Tech Career e-book breaks down how to use this new generation of A.I. tools in a responsible way, with an emphasis on re-reading and editing your IT and technical support resume for maximum impact.
