Get Your Resume Out of the Pile

Forbes has an article on commonly used but tired resume words, such as 'experienced', 'team player', 'seasoned' and 'customer focused'.  These words ascribe a quality label to yourself without quantifying your experience.  'Experience' can mean having done something once or 5000 times.  So use that precious resume real estate to paint a picture for the reader of how you obtained your experience.  "Experienced clinical project manager" becomes "Led five large multinational oncology trials to on-time, on-budget conclusion with high quality submission-ready clinical data".  This statement tells much more about your skills than merely that you were in the room when these trials occurred.

'Team player' is another well-worn resume term that can mean anything from 'plays well with others' to 'world's greatest cupcake maker for team meetings'.  Show your potential manager how you work in teams, using statements like "Led (or participated in) a cross-functional clinical team of CRAs, data managers, regulatory advisers in developing a project plan template for managing a cardiovascular clinical development program.

"Dynamic" is a hard quality to describe and is usually better left for the interview itself.  Dynamism on paper is not quite the same thing as in person.  Use your resume to quantify your skills and accomplishments and save your personality for the interview.

Read the article for yourself, follow the links below for other great sometimes free resume advice, courtesy of Lifehacker.

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