“Results-driven team player with a passion for excellence” tells a recruiter nothing they can act on. Buzzwords feel professional, so they slip into almost every CV, but they are claims without evidence. The fix is not to sound less confident, it is to replace the adjective with the proof behind it. A CV that shows the result never needs to announce that it is results-driven.
Why empty buzzwords hurt you
Recruiters read the same phrases hundreds of times a week, so filler stops registering. Worse, an ATS ranks you on concrete skills and keywords, not on personality words. Every line spent on “hard-working self-starter” is a line not spent on the tool, metric, or outcome that would actually match you to the role.
- Vague adjectives: “dynamic”, “passionate”, “motivated”. Cut them or back each one with a fact.
- Recycled openers: “responsible for”, “duties included”. Start with a verb that shows action instead.
- Undefined claims: “excellent communication skills”. Show it with a talk you gave or a doc you owned.
Swap the claim for the evidence
Turn “detail-oriented” into “reconciled 200 invoices a month with a 0.2% error rate”. Turn “strong leader” into “managed a team of four through a system migration”. The specific version is shorter, more believable, and full of the keywords a scanner is hunting for. You are not banning strong words, you are earning them.
Keep the buzzwords that are real skills
Not every popular term is filler. “Stakeholder management”, “Agile”, “SQL”, and named tools are genuine keywords that recruiters and ATS filters search for. The test is simple: if a phrase names a skill you could be asked to demonstrate in an interview, keep it. If it only describes your attitude, cut it.
Run your draft through the resume checker to flag empty language, then use the bullet point writer to rebuild each line around a real outcome. The keyword scanner shows which terms actually match the job, and these action verbs give you stronger openings than “responsible for”.