Words That You Must Avoid In Your Resume

A CV or Curriculum Vitae is the most vital document and plays the most significant role when you are looking for jobs in Saudi Arabia. It is the first piece of communication that you have with your prospective employer and thus, it deserves attentive writing and designing. However, sometimes we use some words in our CV which act against us. Let us understand what words you must avoid while writing your CV.

While it is very tiresome process to apply for jobs as it needs lots of effort in terms of CV preparation, cover letter writing and changing the documents as per the job profile. But, what can be more frustrating is when you apply for jobs in Saudi Arabia and your CV does not get shortlisted even when you worked very hard on writing it.

Most of the times, we write very appealing CVs with the right set of information in the correct format but what discourages the employers from short listing the CV is the sometimes the way you present information. Though information might be right, but the choice of words may give it a different meaning altogether.

When you send your CV to a hiring manager, often, they give only 20-30 seconds to scan it. Within this period, they only look out for vital information and if it is not presented with perfect set of words, your CV badly fails in giving a strong impression of your professional profile.

Effective and apt word choice is what that appeals to the hiring managers, and by effective words, do not use glittery modifiers or action words. So, when you are applying for jobs in Saudi Arabia, ensure that your CV is elaborate, presents your job responsibilities and professional proficiencies in the perfect manner with the right set of words. Your CV must only convey your accomplishments and what can you do for your potential organization and it should give an impression of your personality.

Here's a rundown of some highly used words in CVs which detract the hiring managers persuasiveness of CVs they go through.

1. Assist or Assisted

The hiring managers are more interested to know about what you did in the company and what your job responsibilities were, and they are not very keen to know about how you helped someone else do his/ her work. So, if you believe that you are aptly familiar with a task but have not solely worked on it and you want to put it on your CV, you can mention the details with a better word in place of assist.

For example, if you want to mention that you assisted your IT department head in researching, you can mention "Researched for IT Department".

2. Skilfully, Mastered, Expert, Carefully and Effectively        

When a hiring manager reads your CV, he /she often object to glittery modifiers which describe how well you performed a specific job. It gives a boastful impression and is unnecessary as well. The reason is if you are good at something, that's why you are mentioning about a particular skill or job that you do quite well. So you need not to be tone down the usage of such words.  

For example, if you want to say that you effectively managed transition from one OS to another, you can write "Migrated organization from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 with no downtime".

3. Experiment

Experiment is again a term that may work against you. Nobody wants to know that what you have tried to do in your organization or how you learned things by experimenting. They are only interested to know what you can perfectly do and what are your achievements.

So, if you want to write that you "Experimented with new project management software", you can write "Tested and evaluated a new project management software".

4. Details-Oriented, Cutting Edge, Synergy

These are the words which do not have any specific meaning in your resume but act as modifiers for other information. However, HR managers believe that these only acquire space in the CV and not convey anything in terms of solid communication.

So, it is advisable that instead of using business jargons, you should give emphasis on providing substance and real details only. Actually, these words sound good in a document where your writing skills are being evaluated, but when it comes to resume, you must only mention the real details as only those will work in your favour. These modifying words will not do any good for you.

Author Bio Author is a job consultant associated with an online job recruiting company and has been working as a vital link between employers and job seekers. He also enjoys blogging. Mostly he shares his views on the jobs and employment in UAE and other Gulf countries.