Résumé words · Improving and fixing
Another word for “Automated”
What it is trying to claim: That a machine now does something a person used to do.
Why it underperforms
A genuinely strong verb that people undersell by naming the tool instead of the saving. The interesting number is always the same one and it is almost always omitted: how much human time stopped being spent, or how much error stopped happening. Without it the bullet describes a script rather than a result, and scripts are cheap.
Stronger than "Automated"
Not ranked. Each is right for one situation, and the situation is the column that matters.
| Word | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Scripted | Modest in scale and you would rather be accurate. |
| Eliminated | The work stopped existing rather than moving to a machine. |
| Streamlined | Steps came out without full automation. |
| Scheduled | The win was that it now runs unattended. |
| Cut | Lead with the time or cost that came out. |
A real bullet, fixed
Before
Automated the weekly reporting process using Python.
After
Automated the weekly channel report, giving two analysts back about six hours each per week and removing the copy-paste step that had caused three restatements in a year.
Hours returned and errors removed are the two numbers this verb always has available, and the tool is context rather than the claim.
When “Automated” is the right word
Constantly, when you can say what it replaced. This is one of the easiest verbs on a résumé to quantify honestly, because the before state was somebody doing it by hand and you know how long that took.
Common questions
- What can I say instead of "Automated" on a résumé?
- Scripted, Eliminated, Streamlined, Scheduled. Pick the one that matches what you actually did, then follow it with a number. Hours returned and errors removed are the two numbers this verb always has available, and the tool is context rather than the claim.
- Is "Automated" bad on a résumé?
- A genuinely strong verb that people undersell by naming the tool instead of the saving. The interesting number is always the same one and it is almost always omitted: how much human time stopped being spent, or how much error stopped happening. Without it the bullet describes a script rather than a result, and scripts are cheap.
- When is it fine to use "Automated"?
- Constantly, when you can say what it replaced. This is one of the easiest verbs on a résumé to quantify honestly, because the before state was somebody doing it by hand and you know how long that took.
Fix these next
- StreamlinedThat you made a process simpler or faster.
- OptimizedThat you tuned something to perform better.
- ImprovedThat something works better than it did.
- ReducedThat a number you can name went down because of you.
All 125 words are on the résumé words index. For the verbs grouped by what they claim, read résumé power verbs.
After the résumé
Fixing the words is the easy half. The applying is the slow half.
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