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20-second career tip

The word that makes you sound lazy on your resume (even when you’re not)

About Rohan

Hey, I’m Rohan!

I write thoughts about life and career strategy a few times a month.

I run Coached, the behavioral science lab, and Resume Worded, the best software for job seekers.

A good place to start is our free 3‑minute, science-backed personality test.

Your resume isn't getting you interviews. Not because you're unqualified - but because hiring managers can't tell if you're qualified.

Look at these bullets:

     

❌ Supported the marketing team with various initiatives
❌ Assisted in data analysis projects

     

A hiring manager reads these and thinks: "Can this person actually do marketing? Can they lead our new social media marketing project? Do they know Excel? I have no idea."

So they don't put you through to the next stage. Why risk it when there are 50 other resumes from people who clearly show they can do the job?

That's the problem with words like "supported" or "assisted." I call them weasel words - they let you hide what you actually did. "Supported" could mean anything from running entire campaigns to getting coffee.

Compare to:

     

✅ Created social media content calendar and posted 3x weekly, growing followers by 40% in 6 months
✅ Cleaned and organized customer data in Excel for 3 analysis projects, reducing prep time from 2 days to 4 hours

     

Much better. A hiring manager is like “Great - this person could run our socials plus could probably put together some reports for leadership…”

If your resume is full of weasel words, that's one reason why you're not getting callbacks. Upload your resume here - the AI catches these and fixes them for you.

P.S. Feel free to steal the good examples and tweak them for your own resume. BUT, an even better idea would be to use our Resume Rewriter features in the tool. Takes about 30 seconds. Might actually get you interviews.

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Illustration of Rohan Mahtani
Written by Rohan Mahtani
From Coached Weekly, issue 326.

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This is Coached Weekly, my career notes where I share the tiny % of ideas that actually work in real careers. It takes 5 minutes to read, but could speed up your career by years. I write this myself (no AI). —Rohan Mahtani (LinkedIn)

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The resume mistake that makes you sound junior (even if you're not)

Look at these two resume lines:

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