The short version
- Open every bullet with what you did. “Responsible for” describes the job, not your work in it.
- Pick the verb by intent: did you build, lead, grow, fix or analyse? The verb sets up the result.
- Present tense for your current role, past tense for the rest — and one tense within a role.
- A strong verb does not need decoration. “Led” beats “spearheaded”; neither replaces a result.
The openers to retire
A bullet that opens with “Responsible for” tells the reader what your job description said. A bullet that opens with an action tells them what changed because you were there. These are the 27 openers our scorer flags, in full:
- responsible for
- duties included
- duties involved
- tasked with
- in charge of
- was involved in
- involved in
- participated in
- helped with
- helped to
- helped
- assisted with
- assisted in
- assisted
- worked on
- worked with
- worked as
- handled
- dealt with
- took part in
- contributed to
- part of a team
- member of a team
- served as
- acted as
- utilized
- leveraged
Before
Responsible for the onboarding flow and its help content.
After
Rebuilt the onboarding flow and its help content, cutting setup questions to support by a third.
Strong verbs, by what you actually did
Choose the verb for the kind of thing you did, then let the rest of the bullet carry the specifics. These categories mirror the verb table our scorer uses to recognise a strong opener.
Results
- won
- secured
- generated
- grew
- increased
- reduced
- cut
- saved
- improved
- accelerated
- doubled
- eliminated
- recovered
Building
- built
- designed
- architected
- developed
- implemented
- shipped
- launched
- automated
- integrated
- migrated
- scaled
- optimized
- wrote
Leading
- led
- managed
- directed
- oversaw
- coordinated
- mentored
- coached
- trained
- hired
- founded
- established
- owned
Analysis
- analyzed
- evaluated
- assessed
- audited
- diagnosed
- investigated
- modeled
- forecast
- measured
- benchmarked
- identified
- validated
Process
- streamlined
- standardized
- consolidated
- restructured
- modernized
- simplified
- prioritized
- planned
- defined
- introduced
People
- presented
- negotiated
- persuaded
- partnered
- aligned
- advised
- facilitated
- advocated
- published
- authored
- taught
Commercial
- sold
- closed
- upsold
- retained
- acquired
- expanded
- monetized
- priced
- budgeted
- raised
Operations
- resolved
- troubleshot
- debugged
- fixed
- maintained
- monitored
- administered
- enforced
- delivered
- completed
Tense: the rule most resumes break
Use the present tense for the job you have now (“Own the roadmap for invoicing”) and the past tense for jobs you have left (“Owned the roadmap…”). Within one role, pick one tense and keep it — mixing them between bullets is one of the most common things our scorer flags, and one of the easiest to fix.
Not overdoing it
Thesaurus verbs — “spearheaded”, “orchestrated”, “synergised” — rarely add anything “led” or “ran” does not, and a page full of them reads as padding. Vary your verbs so that four bullets in a row do not all start with “Managed”, but spend your effort on the result, not the opener.
Want to see which of your bullets open weakly? Our free resume checker flags each one and quotes the line.