The 16 Worst Words to Use on Your Cabin Crew Resume

Whatever you do, don’t use these words in your resume. Unless, of course, you want to make the recruiter cringe and unceremoniously reject your application.

Airline cabin crew recruiters sift through thousands of resumes every year. There are plenty of factors that can make or break your flight attendant application at this early stage. Don’t let these 16 words get in the way of your progress to the next round.

Here’s the thing: many people include these words because they mistakenly think that’s what the recruiter is looking for. Others don’t realise they need to describe how they did something, not just claim they’re good at it (here’s looking at you, “Good Communication Skills”).

Why These Words Actively Hurt Your Resume

You might be thinking that if the rest of your resume is strong, with the right experience and skills airline recruiters want, a few weak words here and there won’t matter. But there’s a problem: many airlines now scan resumes through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) before a human ever sees them.

This can work in your favour when you’re using the right skills and competencies. More often, though, it works against you. Include enough of these 16 words, and the ATS can actively mark your resume down, and a poor score can mean a human recruiter never gets the chance to see it at all.

The 16 Worst Words to Use

• Team Player
• Self-Motivated
• Good Communication Skills
• Hard Working
• Problem Solver
• Strong Work Ethic
• Proactive
• Go-getter
• Results Driven
• Best of Breed
• People Person
• Synergy
• Track Record
• Detail Orientated
• Dynamic
• Think Outside of the Box

There are a few simple ways to replace these with something better, depending on which problem they’re actually causing.

Explain What You Actually Did

Team Player, Self-Motivated, Good Communication Skills, Hard Working, Problem Solver, Strong Work Ethic, Proactive, People Person

The vast majority of the 16 words fall into this category. It’s not enough to say you can do something; that’s just a shopping list of the skills a recruiter is already looking for. You need to prove you actually possess them.

Describe precisely what you did and what you achieved, in a way that gets the recruiter genuinely interested rather than skimming past another generic claim. Your resume shouldn’t list your responsibilities but rather describe your accomplishments.

This is a skill in itself and takes some practice. To master this skill, follow our companion guide: How to Write a Winning Resume: Describe Achievements, Don’t Bore With Responsibilities

Avoid Words That Contradict Each Other

Go-getter, Detail-Oriented

These two words are good examples of a subtler problem: claiming traits that can undercut each other if you don’t explain them properly. A “go-getter” implies fast, instinctive action, while “detail-oriented” implies careful, methodical checking. Both can be true of the same person, but when you write them side by side with no explanation, they appear contradictory rather than complementary.

If you are going to use contradictory qualities, mention a specific incident that proves you possess the competency you’re claiming, and the apparent contradiction disappears because the reader can see how the two actually worked together in practice.

Or Just Leave Them Out Entirely

Synergy, Think Outside of the Box, Track Record, Best of Breed, Results Driven, Dynamic

These add almost nothing to your resume. At best, they take up space that could be spent proving something real. At worst, they come across as trying too hard, and that’s a cringeworthy first impression to leave a recruiter with.

Instead, focus on the qualities airlines are actually looking for in their cabin crew, and make sure every sentence in your resume is doing real work toward proving you have them.