"Increased engagement by 15%." "Increased CTR." "Increased brand awareness." When every bullet starts with the same verb, recruiters stop reading. Not because "increased" is wrong—it's just doing no work. The number does the work. The channel does the work. The verb is invisible filler.

What weak 'increased' bullets look like

Here are four real patterns that land in the "maybe" pile:

"Increased email open rates through better segmentation."
No baseline, no timeframe, no segment size. "Better" hides the actual work.

"Increased social media engagement across channels."
Which channels? By what %? Engagement is vague—likes, shares, comments, or saves?

"Increased MQLs by running more campaigns."
More campaigns isn't a strategy. This reads like you threw spaghetti at a wall.

"Increased revenue for Q3."
Every company wants revenue to go up. What lever did you pull? Pricing? Upsell motion? New vertical?

Each bullet uses "increased" because the writer couldn't name the mechanism. The verb became a placeholder.

Stronger swaps — 15 synonyms

Synonym When it fits Resume bullet
Scaled You added budget, headcount, or distribution to grow something systematically Scaled paid social spend from $18K/mo to $94K/mo while holding CAC under $42, adding 3 new creative formats
Accelerated You shortened a cycle or sped up a trend already in motion Accelerated newsletter subscriber growth from 4% MoM to 19% MoM by launching a referral loop with double-sided incentives
Boosted Quick, tactical win—often channel-specific Boosted Instagram story completion rate from 61% to 83% by front-loading the CTA and cutting avg story count from 9 to 5 frames
Grew Organic, sustained expansion—works for community, audience, pipeline Grew organic search traffic from 8.2K/mo to 31K/mo over 6 months by publishing 42 long-tail SEO guides and earning 190 backlinks
Amplified You added reach or volume to an existing asset or campaign Amplified webinar attendance from 220 to 640 registrants by adding LinkedIn retargeting and a 3-email drip sequence
Expanded You added a dimension—new segment, new geography, new use case Expanded email list segmentation from 3 buckets to 11, lifting campaign CTR from 2.1% to 4.7% across 80K subscribers
Doubled Literal 2x—only use if true Doubled demo-request conversion rate from 1.9% to 3.8% by A/B testing CTA copy and reducing form fields from 8 to 4
Lifted A/B test or incremental improvement, often in conversion or engagement Lifted paid search ROAS from 2.3x to 4.1x by refining audience exclusions and pausing 14 underperforming keywords
Drove You were the primary force behind the outcome Drove a 37% lift in trial-to-paid conversion by rebuilding onboarding emails with persona-specific case studies
Extended You lengthened reach, duration, or lifespan Extended average campaign lifespan from 11 days to 29 days by introducing evergreen creative rotation and monthly refreshes
Elevated You improved quality or perception, often brand-focused Elevated NPS from 34 to 58 by launching a customer advisory board and closing the feedback loop on 22 feature requests
Multiplied More than doubled, or spread across multiple dimensions Multiplied webinar pipeline contribution from $47K to $310K in one quarter by adding 4 new topic tracks and co-marketing with 3 partners
Improved General upgrade—use when the mechanism is a mix of tactics Improved email deliverability from 91% to 98% by migrating ESPs, cleaning the list, and implementing DMARC
Advanced You moved a metric or initiative forward against resistance or complexity Advanced attribution model from last-click to multi-touch, surfacing $210K in previously uncredited top-of-funnel spend
Strengthened You reinforced something already working—often retention or loyalty Strengthened repeat-purchase rate from 18% to 31% by launching a points-based loyalty program with tiered perks

Three rewrites

Weak:
"Increased website traffic through SEO."

Strong:
"Grew organic traffic from 12K to 47K monthly visitors in 5 months by targeting 38 long-tail keywords and earning 140+ backlinks."

The swap from "increased" to "grew" signals sustained, compounding work. The keyword count and backlink number show the two levers.

Weak:
"Increased engagement on social media campaigns."

Strong:
"Boosted LinkedIn engagement rate from 1.2% to 4.8% by testing 6 content formats and doubling down on carousel posts with data storytelling."

"Boosted" fits the tactical, channel-specific nature. The format experimentation is the mechanism, not "better engagement."

Weak:
"Increased MQLs by improving landing pages."

Strong:
"Lifted MQL conversion rate from 3.1% to 6.9% by A/B testing 11 landing-page variants and cutting form fields from 9 to 5."

"Lifted" is the A/B test verb. The variant count and form-field reduction are the actual improvements—"improving" hid that work.

When 'increased' is genuinely the right word

Sometimes "increased" is the cleanest, most honest verb:

When the JD uses "increased" repeatedly. Mirror the language for ATS keyword matching—don't out-clever yourself if the recruiter wrote the job description with that exact verb.

When you're listing a straightforward metric table. If you have five KPIs in a summary section (CAC, LTV, ROAS, MQL volume, NRR), using "increased" for all five keeps the structure parallel and readable.

When the mechanism is truly a blend. If you improved a metric through ten micro-optimizations across attribution, creative, landing pages, and email nurture, "increased" honestly captures the aggregate without forcing a false single-lever story.

Where verbs land in your bullets decides if they're read

Recruiters don't read resumes left-to-right like a novel. Eye-tracking studies show the first three words of every bullet get scanned first—if those words are vague, the rest of the bullet is skipped. "Increased email open rates" wastes the opening slot on a verb that could be anything. "Grew subscriber base from 8K to 34K" front-loads the outcome and the scale, so even if the recruiter stops reading mid-bullet, the headline landed.

Start-position verbs anchor the bullet. If your verb is "increased," the recruiter has to keep reading to figure out what increased and how. If your verb is "scaled," "boosted," or "doubled," the verb itself carries a hypothesis about the method—scaling implies added resources, boosting implies a lever, doubling implies a threshold crossed. The verb becomes a search filter: recruiters hunting for growth experience will stop on "scaled" and "grew" because those words promise the next clause will contain a growth story.

Middle-position verbs—buried after a long clause—only work if the opening clause already hooked the recruiter. "Rebuilt the email nurture sequence and increased trial-to-paid conversion by 41%" works because "rebuilt" is concrete; the verb "increased" is now just reporting the outcome. But "Worked on email campaigns and increased engagement" hides two weak verbs and gives the recruiter nothing to anchor on.

The brutal truth: if "increased" is your opening verb and you haven't named the what or how in the first five words, the bullet is functionally invisible during the six-second resume scan. Recruiters are scanning for outcomes and proper nouns—tool names, channel names, hard numbers. The verb only registers once those elements convince them to actually read the sentence. Fix this by moving your strongest noun or number into the first three words, or by swapping "increased" for a verb that encodes the method: "scaled" (added resources), "accelerated" (shortened cycle), "lifted" (A/B tested). The verb should do work, not wait for the rest of the bullet to explain it.

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For more: identified synonym, incorporated synonym, informed synonym, inspected synonym, invented synonym