Resume Action Words 2026: The Only Published Verb Grid

The resume action word grid, in three degrees

Alvarez & Marsal's early careers FAQ says what it wants to hear about: "We are eager to hear about previous projects you've participated in, led, or initiated."

Three degrees of involvement, named in ascending order, published by a firm. That is the whole grid, and it does more work than a long list because it forces a judgment you were avoiding. For each line on your resume, which of the three is true?

Most candidates write every bullet at the level of led, because it sounds better. The cost of that is invisible until the interview, when a firm asks the follow-up and the answer collapses. The firm that asks for tangible project experience says so directly: Porsche Consulting writes "Enrich your application with tangible project experience! This will show your applied skills. We look forward to hearing more about this in the interview."

So the grid is a commitment device. Writing initiated means you will be asked what you started and from what. Writing participated in works perfectly well on a page where the result is real. It is an accurate label that survives questioning, and the number beside it carries the weight.

Sort your bullets before you polish them. Take every line on the page and mark it P, L or I. If everything comes out L, you have a page nobody will believe.

The four questions a bullet has to answer

A named recruiting expert at McKinsey, in an interview the firm published on its careers blog in September 2021, sets out what the experience section should contain. Her words: "We want to hear what you did in your role and why your work mattered. What problems did you solve? How did your work stand out? What skills did you learn or master?"

That is four questions, and almost no bullet answers the second. What you did is easy. Why it mattered requires a number and a consequence.

The same interview adds two instructions that change what goes on the page. On the scope of relevant work: "We're interested in hearing about everything from retail work to research to work on campus." And on the format of part-time work: "If you have done part-time work (especially while studying for a degree), include your average hours worked per week."

She also asks for a specific category by name: "Include teamwork and leadership experiences." Those are the two bucket labels she names, so the leadership section is not an optional flourish at that firm.

One caveat on how to read this source. It is one voice, at one firm, on a page her employer publishes to attract applications, and she is identified only by first name. The interview is dated, and the date is five years before this page. It is a reliable record of what she says she reads, and it is not evidence about any other firm.

Our own verb table, built to the three resume action words

No firm publishes verbs. The table below is our own construction, built to the three published degrees. It is offered as ours rather than as any firm's, which is the distinction the rest of this site exists to keep.

Three rules about using it. Never reach up a level for a verb. Never use two verbs in one bullet, because the reader cannot tell which one carries the result. And never use a verb whose follow-up you cannot answer for five minutes.

The last one is not a style preference. Charles River Associates publishes the shape of that follow-up for research work, and the demand is specific: "Come prepared to talk about it, a lot. Demonstrate that you understand what you did, why you did it, and the takeaways you gained." Three things, on one line of your resume.

The resume action words to cut, and why

Two families fail, and both are common enough to have become invisible.

The first family describes duties. Responsible for, assisted with, involved in, supported, helped, worked on, participated in meetings. Every one of those describes a seat rather than an act, and any successor in the role would write the same words. The test is simple: could the person who replaced you use this exact bullet? If yes, it says nothing about you.

The second family inflates. Spearheaded, championed, orchestrated, drove, transformed, revolutionized. These read as claims about scale from someone with no scale, and they trigger exactly the follow-up you cannot survive. A firm that asks what you participated in, led or initiated has given you three words that are more useful than any of these six.

There is a third case which no verb can repair. Roland Berger names the experiences it values: "study abroad, entrepreneurial ventures, charitable projects or internships, where you've demonstrated robust analytical and strategic skills, team work and creativity." If your page has none of those four categories, no verb will fix it, and the remedy is a term of doing something rather than an afternoon of editing.

Charles River Associates publishes the fallback for exactly that situation: "If you don't have research experience, find another line on your resume to highlight that can signal some of the same attributes." That is permission to reframe rather than to inflate.

Three bullets rewritten, with the action word and the math

Each pair below keeps the same facts and changes the verb and the number. The arithmetic is exposed so a reader can redo it.

One. A finance internship, weekly reporting. Before: "Responsible for preparing the weekly management reporting pack." After: "Rebuilt the weekly reporting pack from 31 pages to 12, roughly 61% shorter, by cutting nine schedules that no reader had opened in six months." The math: 31 minus 12 is 19 pages removed, and 19 divided by 31 is 0.613, so roughly 61%. The verb is at the led level and the follow-up is answerable, because the nine schedules are nameable.

Two. A volunteer clinic, unpaid and it still counts. Before: "Helped with outreach for a student-run health clinic." After: "Started a text reminder list for a student-run clinic and took monthly attendance from 42 patients to 118, roughly 181% higher, over one semester." The math: 118 divided by 42 is 2.81, so attendance rose to about 2.8 times the starting level. The increase itself is 118 minus 42, or 76 patients, and 76 divided by 42 is 1.81, so roughly a 181% rise. The verb is at the initiated level, because the list did not exist before.

Three. A procurement project, one of several people. Before: "Involved in a supplier consolidation project." After: "Analyzed spend across 7 supplier contracts in a consolidation project and identified 3 to keep, cutting annual spend by 84,000 dollars against a 1,200,000 dollar base, a 7% reduction." The math: 84,000 divided by 1,200,000 is 0.07, so 7% exactly, with no rounding to announce. The verb is at the participated level, honestly, and the bullet is the strongest of the three because the number is the largest and the claim is the smallest.

That third pair is the one to study. Downgrading the verb did not weaken the bullet. It made the number believable.

The rounding rule, which is a competence test

Two of the three bullets above say roughly. That word is not a hedge, and leaving it out is an error rather than a tightening.

The first bullet computes to 0.613. Writing 61% and calling it exact would be false. Writing "roughly 61%" is what a consultant does, because it states the precision of the claim alongside the claim.

The second bullet is worse if you get it wrong, because there are two defensible numbers and they differ by a factor. Attendance went to 2.8 times its starting level. The increase was 181%. Those describe the same fact and a reader who confuses them will think you have made an error, or that you are inflating. Pick one, name it precisely, and keep the unit attached.

The third bullet needs no rounding word at all, because 84,000 over 1,200,000 is 7% on the nose. Adding roughly there would be a false hedge in the other direction.

This matters beyond the page. Charles River Associates publishes why: "One is attention to detail, in every sense of the phrase." It goes on to say that on a high-profile matter there is an analyst on the other side whose job is to find your mistakes, and that "Even just one mistake in the wrong place can sink a case." A resume with arithmetic that does not close is a sample of your work.

What no firm publishes about resume action words

Four gaps, and the first is the reason this page is short on lists.

1. Any verb list. Nobody in our reading publishes one, which is why the table above is labeled as ours.
2. Whether verb choice is scored. The two published CV criteria lists in our files, from OC&C and KPMG Canada, are recorded in the consulting resume guide and neither mentions language.
3. How many bullets a role should carry. Unpublished everywhere.
4. Whether a bullet may run to two lines. Unpublished everywhere.

For the questions a firm can answer, the firm's help channels are free and published. Nothing on this page needs an account, and a long verb list from a template vendor will never do the work of a number you can defend.

A fifth gap is worth naming because it changes how you spend an afternoon. No firm publishes whether a human or a tool reads the bullet first. One does publish that a tool is involved somewhere in its CV screening, and that some decisions may be taken before individual human review, which is recorded with the rest of its instructions in the consulting resume guide. That firm names no fields and no weights. So writing for a machine and writing for a reader cannot be separated on the published evidence, and the only strategy that serves both is a bullet whose facts are plain and whose arithmetic closes.

Where an afternoon on verbs stops paying

A verb gets a bullet read accurately. The interview scores something else, and our own weights say what our drills measure. Our synthesis rubric scores Answer first 35, then Evidence 25, Risk 20 and Next step 20. Those four are ours, set by us and read from our own code, and no firm publishes a rubric of its own.

Evidence 25 is the one that connects to this page. A recommendation backed by a number you can produce on demand is the same skill as a bullet whose arithmetic closes, which is why an afternoon on the page is worth it and a week is not. The synthesis drill and the math drill both run without an account, and the method page explains each weight. Our six case simulators are not live yet, and no drill here teaches business content.

Adjacent pages: the file mechanics and a full template are in the consulting resume template guide, the criteria firms publish with six more rewritten bullets are in the consulting resume guide, and the letter question is in the consulting cover letter guide.

The same verbs do not do the same work in both places: a profile and a resume are read for different things.

What changed on this action words page, and when

30 September 2026. This replaces a 253-word page that offered a short verb list with no source and implied it came from recruiting practice.

The list is gone. Every long verb list we traced for this rewrite led to a template vendor or a content aggregator, and none led to a firm. What replaced it is the three-level grid Alvarez & Marsal publishes, plus a table we built to it and explicitly label as ours.

Also removed: a claim that strong verbs improve how a resume scores. Nobody publishes that, and the two published CV criteria lists in our files say nothing about language at all.

Added in this version: the three published degrees with the follow-up each invites, the four questions a named McKinsey recruiting expert says a bullet should answer, the three things Charles River Associates wants you ready to say, two families of verbs to cut with the reason for each, three rewritten bullets with their arithmetic redone by hand, and a rounding rule with the case where announcing a rounding would itself be wrong.