The 2026 Resume Buzzword Report: What Our AI Flags Most Often

We built the Buzzword Density Score, a 0-to-100 measure of how much corporate fluff is hiding in a resume, because we kept noticing the same handful of phrases across resumes from wildly different candidates. Since launching it, thousands of resumes have been scored, and the patterns are more predictable than we expected.

How these numbers are made, up front. Every roast stores three things about buzzwords: the score, a count of flagged phrases by category, and the five worst phrases on the page, quoted. Everything below is computed from those stored results, across a rolling window of the most recent scored resumes (460 at the October 2026 refresh, covering September 29 to October 6). We don't keep resume text, so we can't count how often a phrase appears on all resumes; what we can say is how often a phrase is bad enough to be quoted among a resume's five worst. Treat the numbers as directional, and the ranking as reliable.

The five categories and how often each dominates

The Buzzword Density Score classifies every flagged phrase into one of five categories. Share of all flagged phrases, October 2026:

The surprise is at the top. When we launched the detector we expected empty adjectives ("passionate," "dynamic") to dominate. They don't. The single biggest category is vague metrics: bullets shaped like accomplishments with no number in them. "Improved efficiency." "Drove results." "Supported strong team performance." More than a quarter of everything the detector flags is a claim that would be fine with a figure attached and says nothing without one. The lead has narrowed since September, when it was 32%, so read the top three as close rather than a runaway.

Corporate clichés and empty adjectives are effectively tied for second. Clichés are the category most concentrated in skills sections and summaries; empty adjectives are the ones people notice first. Verb inflation is subtler: you can use "spearheaded" once and it reads fine; use it four times and it screams. Title puffery is the smallest category by volume and the most memorable when it appears.

The score itself

The median resume scores 22 out of 100. The middle half of resumes fall between 12 and 28. Under the current calibration almost nothing scores above 75; the resumes up there are the ones where filler outnumbers substance line for line. About one resume in ten has no quotable offender at all.

Scoring was recalibrated in mid-2026 to stop over-penalising ordinary professional language ("led a team" is not a buzzword), so medians published before that aren't comparable with these.

Category 1: Vague Metrics (28% of flagged phrases)

The most damaging category and, it turns out, the biggest. Vague metrics are phrases that look like accomplishments but contain no actual data.

The shape, over and over: "improved efficiency," "drove results," "made a significant impact," "helped grow," "delivered on time," "supported strong team performance." Each one has a verb and an outcome and no measurement of either.

What it tells us: this is where AI-assisted resume writers get into the most trouble. Ask a language model to "make this bullet sound stronger" without giving it the numbers and this is what it produces: plausible claims that don't survive the "walk me through this" interview question. It's also where the biggest wins are, because the fix is mechanical.

Highest-leverage fix: every bullet with a verb-plus-outcome shape needs a number. If you don't have the exact figure, use an honest approximation ("roughly 30%") or a verifiable proxy ("from 4 to 11 accounts"). Never let AI invent one for you.

Category 2: Corporate Clichés (26% of flagged phrases)

The fossils. Phrases that were fine in 1998 and have decayed into meaningless resume seasoning.

Quoted most often: "cross-functional collaboration" leads every category by a wide margin, and "team player" is one of the next few. Behind them: "effective communicator," "proactive problem-solving," "strong communication skills," "self-starter," and the occasional "synergy," which is miraculously still hanging on.

What it tells us: the clichés category shrinks fastest with the age of a resume. Freshly rebuilt resumes have few; resumes edited forward for years accumulate them, because nobody deletes a line that isn't wrong. If you haven't rebuilt yours from scratch in five years, you probably have three.

Highest-leverage fix: delete them on sight. None adds information. "Team player" in particular is so common it's become invisible: using it doesn't help you and not using it doesn't hurt you. We keep the full delete list current.

Category 3: Empty Adjectives (26% of flagged phrases)

The words that used to mean something and now signal "the writer didn't know what else to put here."

Quoted most often: "passionate," "detail-oriented," "strategic," "dynamic," "results-driven," "innovative," "motivated." "Passionate" leads, almost always in the summary, almost always followed by "about [industry]." "Detail-oriented" carries the category's great irony: a fair share of the resumes claiming it have inconsistent formatting a few lines down.

What it tells us: this is the hardest category to escape because these words feel safe. They're not wrong, they don't overclaim, and they don't say anything. Recruiters have been trained to skim past them, so they take up the best real estate on the page without earning it.

Highest-leverage fix: search your resume for each of these and remove it unless you can immediately follow with evidence. "Results-driven" alone is filler; "grew ARR from $2M to $9M in 18 months" is fine, and at that point the adjective is deletable anyway. We covered the fuller taxonomy in Resume Buzzwords to Avoid.

Category 4: Verb Inflation (14% of flagged phrases)

The widest gap between how bad it looks and how good it sounds when you write it. Verb inflation is a verb that's technically fine but disproportionate to the underlying action.

Quoted most often: "spearheaded," "leveraged," "championed," "orchestrated," "pioneered." Note what's not on the list: "led" and "managed." The detector doesn't flag those when they describe real leadership or real management, which is most of the time.

What it tells us: inflation shows up when a candidate feels a contribution was smaller than they wanted it to be and reaches for a bigger verb. Recruiters catch it because they've read a real "spearheaded" recently, usually from a founder, and everyone else's reads like a butter knife by comparison.

Highest-leverage fix: count the promoted verbs on your resume. More than three, and at least half should be downgraded. "Led," "drove," "built," and "owned" read as stronger precisely because they read as accurate. The Bullet Surgeon downgrades inflated verbs unless the accomplishment underneath earns them.

Category 5: Title Puffery (6% of flagged phrases)

The smallest category by volume, the loudest by cringe.

The archetypes: "[Function] Architect" for roles that weren't architecture; "Growth Ninja," "Marketing Rockstar," "Sales Wizard"; "Chief of [X]" at very small companies; "Visionary [Role]."

What it tells us: title puffery is the category most concentrated by industry. Ninja and rockstar titles peak in marketing and early-stage startups. Architect titles peak in mid-career professionals trying to read more senior. "Chief of Staff at a four-person startup" is often a real title with a tiny scope.

Highest-leverage fix: if you invented your title (freelance, self-employment, small startups), use the standard industry equivalent. If the title was real but the scope was small, keep the title and let the bullets tell the scope honestly: "Owned ops, hiring, finance, and product across a 4-person seed-stage team."

The distribution matters more than any single phrase

The most useful thing in the data isn't which phrase to delete. It's this: most resumes score badly because they have a little of every category rather than a lot of any one.

A resume with two empty adjectives, one inflated verb, one cliché, and one vague metric typically lands in the 40s: not catastrophic, but recruiters skim it. A resume with none of the above typically scores under 15 and reads faster, which is what earns the second look.

So the fix isn't "cut buzzwords" as a vague goal. It's:

1. Add a real number to every vague metric, or delete the bullet
2. Delete every corporate cliché
3. Delete every empty adjective
4. Downgrade inflated verbs where they don't earn the size
5. Use standard titles unless the puffery is genuinely descriptive

Do those five things and the score drops sharply. Recruiters don't consciously notice what changed. The resume just reads faster.

For the numbers in this report with citation links, see our research page. To see where your own resume lands, run it through the BS Detector: the score, the category breakdown, and your five worst phrases, in about 30 seconds.