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Job Hunting? Cut These 3 Overused Words From Your Resume Now
By Adam Hardy MONEY RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
These words simply describe a job role instead of demonstrating your effectiveness — and the latter is what hiring managers are truly looking for.
Today’s job market is competitive, and hunting for a new role can feel like a slog. The last thing you want is for your resume to be working against you.
A simple way to stand out is to tailor your resume by avoiding overused words. A recent analysis by the career website ResumeCoach found that millions of resumes posted on Indeed include the same handful of nondescript buzzwords.
The No. 1 most-used word in the analysis was “managed,” which appeared on 9.1 million resumes out of 111 million scrutinized. In second place, “organized” was mentioned on 7.1 million resumes. “Accurate” showed up on 5.3 million.
So what’s the problem? According to ResumeCoach, these words simply describe a job role instead of demonstrating your effectiveness, and the latter is what hiring managers are truly looking for.
For example, the phrase “managed a team of five employees” doesn’t say anything about how well you actually did in your previous role. Instead, you can reword it to something like “led a five-person team that increased conversions by 150%.”
“Employers don’t just want to know what you did,” Keith Spencer, a career expert at FlexJobs, said in Money’s 2026 resume guide. “They want to understand how you did it and what results you achieved.”
The most overused words on resumes
ResumeCoach’s analysis tracked the usage of 110 popular resume buzzwords using Indeed’s database of nearly 111 million resumes nationwide.
Here are the words that showed up most often.
- Managed: appeared on 9.1 million resumes (8.2% of all resumes inspected)
- Organized: 7.1 million (6.4%)
- Accurate: 5.3 million (4.8%)
- Collaborated: 4.4 million (4%)
- Trained: 4.3 million (3.9%)
- Efficient: 4.1 million (3.7%)
- Skilled: 4 million (3.6%)
- Implemented: 3.6 million (3.3%)
- Supported: 3.4 million (3.1%)
- Delivered: 3.1 million (2.8%)
- Monitored: 2.9 million (2.6%)
- Strategic: 2.6 million (2.3%)
- Established: 2.4 million (2.2%)
- Supervised: 2.4 million (2.2%)
- Detail-oriented: 2.3 million (2.1%)
- Resolved: 2.2 million (2%)
- Reliable: 2.2 million (2%)
Other ways to improve your resume
Resume experts told Money that one of the most important things to keep in mind when applying is that employers often use applicant-tracking system (ATS) software — and increasingly AI — to scan resumes before a human ever sees it.
That means you need to design a resume that’s easy for ATS programs to read.
“A clean, simple format that maximizes readability is critical,” Spencer said.
It’s often a good idea to avoid complex design elements like tables and graphics. Instead, opt for clear section labels with predictable formats.
As for the content of your resume, using phrases from the job listing is one of the best ways to ensure an ATS puts you in the “yes” pile. When in doubt, Lauren Mastroni, a career expert and digital content writer at Resume Genius, recommended using near-exact phrasing.
“If a job description for a role says ‘project lifecycle management’ and you write ‘oversaw end-to-end project execution’ on your resume, the company’s screening software might miss it,” she told Money, “even though the meanings are similar.”
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Adam Hardy is Money's lead data journalist. He writes news and feature stories aimed at helping everyday people manage their finances. He joined Money full-time in 2021 but has covered personal finance and economic topics since 2018. Previously, he worked for Forbes Advisor, The Penny Hoarder and Creative Loafing. In addition to those outlets, Adam’s work has been featured in a variety of local, national and international publications, including the Asia Times, Business Insider, Las Vegas Review-Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Nasdaq and several others. Adam graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida, where he studied magazine journalism and sociology. As a first-generation college graduate from a low-income, single-parent household, Adam understands firsthand the financial barriers that plague low-income Americans. His reporting aims to illuminate these issues. Since joining Money, Adam has already written over 500 articles, including a cover story on financial surveillance, a profile of Director Rohit Chopra of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and an investigation into flexible spending accounts, which found that workers forfeit billions of dollars annually through the workplace plans. He has also led data analysis on several of Money’s marquee rankings, including Best Hospitals, Best Credit Cards, Best Places to Live and others. In 2025, Adam was named a Goldschmidt Data Journalism Fellow by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW). As part of the fellowship, he received hands-on training from SABEW, the U.S. Census, U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, Bureau of Labor Statistics and other federal government agencies in Washington, D.C. Adam also holds a multimedia storytelling certificate from Poynter’s News University and a data journalism certificate from the Investigative Reporters and Editors at the University of Missouri. In 2017, he received an English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge, which he utilized during his time in Seoul, South Korea. There, he taught students of all ages, from 5 to 65, and worked with North Korean refugees who were resettling in the area. Now, Adam lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, with his pup Bambi. He is a card-carrying shuffleboard club member.