Résumé words · Improving and fixing
Another word for “Improved”
What it is trying to claim: That something works better than it did.
Why it underperforms
It begs the question it does not answer. Better by how much, from what, measured how. Because the verb explicitly invokes a comparison, leaving the comparison out is more conspicuous here than with almost any other word, and readers treat an unquantified improvement claim as a rounding-up.
Stronger than "Improved"
Not ranked. Each is right for one situation, and the situation is the column that matters.
| Word | Use it when |
|---|---|
| Reduced | The thing that got better was smaller. Give both figures. |
| Increased | The thing that got better was bigger. |
| Rewrote | You replaced it rather than tuning it. |
| Streamlined | Steps came out of a process. |
| Fixed | It was broken. Plain words are strong here. |
| Doubled | The multiple is clean enough to be the headline. |
A real bullet, fixed
Before
Improved the performance of the reporting dashboard.
After
Cut dashboard load time from 11 seconds to 1.8 by pre-aggregating the three heaviest queries; daily active users went from 30 to 110.
The second half is the part most people leave out, and it is what turns a technical fix into a business result.
When “Improved” is the right word
When the improvement is qualitative and honestly unmeasurable, and you say what changed instead of a number.
Common questions
- What can I say instead of "Improved" on a résumé?
- Reduced, Increased, Rewrote, Streamlined. Pick the one that matches what you actually did, then follow it with a number. The second half is the part most people leave out, and it is what turns a technical fix into a business result.
- Is "Improved" bad on a résumé?
- It begs the question it does not answer. Better by how much, from what, measured how. Because the verb explicitly invokes a comparison, leaving the comparison out is more conspicuous here than with almost any other word, and readers treat an unquantified improvement claim as a rounding-up.
- When is it fine to use "Improved"?
- When the improvement is qualitative and honestly unmeasurable, and you say what changed instead of a number.
Fix these next
- EnhancedThat you made something better.
- OptimizedThat you tuned something to perform better.
- StreamlinedThat you made a process simpler or faster.
- IncreasedThat a number went up because of something you did.
- ReducedThat a number you can name went down because of you.
- ResolvedThat something broken or disputed was ended by you.
All 72 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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