You want your resume to be as brief as possible because many employers simply glance at each one for a few seconds to locate qualified individuals. You should select a resume format that makes your qualifications stand out to companies and is simple to scan. A fantastic method to achieve this is to list your work experience and skills in bullet points.
Employers will be more likely to notice your talents and qualifications that are relevant to the open position if you use bullet points in your resume. If you wish to list your duties and accomplishments for each of your past positions, utilize bullet points. Use bullet points to arrange and make it easier to understand the information in your talents section.
When are bullet points appropriate for a resume?
If you’re utilizing a chronological or hybrid resume, use bullet points. Both of these resume formats put a strong emphasis on your prior employment history. For a functional resume that emphasizes in-depth abilities over experience, bullet points are less helpful.
Why is it vital to use bullet points on a resume?
When determining whether a candidate’s job experience is relevant to the role, many hiring managers look first at the bullet points on your resume. You may stress how competent you are for a particular profession and raise your chances of getting an interview by creating bullets that highlight your pertinent abilities and attributes.
How should your resume use bullet points?
The area of your resume devoted to your employment history can contain bullet points. All of your former employment that is relevant to the position you are looking for should be listed here. In reverse chronological sequence, from most recent to least recent, your employment history should be stated on the resume.
Include two to four bullet points under each job that describe any achievements or responsibilities relevant to the position you’re looking for. Refer to concrete outcomes and data while describing your accomplishments.
If you want to go into more detail about your roles and the work you completed, you can utilize bullet points under your volunteer experience. Additionally, you can list your accomplishments and skills using bullet points.
How to effectively use bullet points in your resume
The following procedures will help you write resume bullet points effectively that an employer will read:
• Start with the most crucial item.
• Give your successes some context.
• Talk about the outcome.
• Apply the STAR approach.
• Ensure simplicity.
• Quantify the outcomes.
1. Commence with the most crucial thing.
Employing managers skim resumes at first before deciding whether to read them in more detail, so you should include the most crucial details at the head of your list of bullet points. This will improve the likelihood that readers will read about your most impressive achievements. For instance:
• supervised the marketing efforts for a multinational firm with over 50 clients, including numerous corporate accounts.
• pushed for the partnership with the video marketing firm, establishing a new revenue stream that brought in $100,000 the first year.
These two bullet points are both impressive and will catch the recruiting manager’s eye. The second bullet, on the other hand, has a tighter focus, thus it is preferable to start with it when selecting what order to arrange your bullets in.
2. Explain the background of your achievements
Your first bullet point should highlight your most noteworthy achievements while also providing background information so the hiring manager completely knows your function. Include details about the business you worked for, the annual income, the number of clients served, or the range of operations.
You will notice a bullet in this example that is impressive but offers little context:
• Created sales writing that complied with the organization’s SEO objectives, enhanced search engine rankings, and raised site traffic
• The recruiting manager will comprehend the position you held if you give context to your accomplishments:
• By writing material that enhanced search engine results and increased website traffic by 35%, you took the lead in carrying out the agency’s digital marketing goals.
3. Discuss Outcomes
Because most resume bullet points are just a long list of duties, you can stand out from the crowd by include details on the outcomes you produced for the company. This will make it easier for the recruiting manager to see how you might affect their business. To help you grasp the distinction, consider the following example:
• Assisted the team in redesigning websites, added additional e-commerce filtering options, and assessed the usability of the website.
As you can see, this bullet lists the activities you engaged in. It doesn’t specify who was affected or why it was significant, though. To help you better grasp how the bullet should appear, here is another illustration:
• Arranged and monitored a $50k website overhaul for a customer, which increased sales by $100,000 from one year to the next.
4. Apply the STAR technique
For effective resume descriptions, use the STAR approach. STAR is short for:
• Situation: The dispute you were involved in
• Task: Your obligations or objectives
• The Steps: You took to address the issue
• Result: The result you got
Imagine you were the regional manager of a retail company and saw that the staff in a new site were picking things up too slowly. Your duty in this case is to facilitate their learning more quickly. You took the initiative to draught and modify a training manual and include video tutorials for every new hire to watch. As a result, the new hires are completely capable of selling goods in the store and carrying out their other duties by the end of the training term. The bullet point on your CV could read: created and edited training films, as well as the first training manual, saving training time in half to better onboard new employees.
5. Keep it basic
For the hiring manager to rapidly examine your bullets, it’s crucial to keep them straightforward and simple to understand. Choose your details wisely so you can show the hiring manager what you’re capable of doing without overloading them. If you want to incorporate examples in your bullets, it’s a good idea to keep it to three.
Here is an illustration of a bullet with excessive detail:
• Created and presented campaign performance reports, which included analytics like click-through rates, customer engagement metrics, and heat maps, in collaboration with the sales team to help the business make better decisions.
A shorter form of that bullet is as follows:
• Developed, implemented, and evaluated advertising campaigns in conjunction with the sales team, and provided performance reports to executives to aid in decision-making.
6. Calculate Your Outcomes
You should always if at all feasible, use figures in your bullets to highlight the effect you had on the organization. It’s also good to share business data that was produced with your participation. Here is an illustration of a bullet point without measurable outcomes:
Month after month surpassed sales goals and was recognized as one of the top sales representatives in the organization.
Your resume might stand out by including the quantifiable results you generated for the firm. Here’s an illustration of what that might entail:
consistently met 175% of the quota, which earned him an award for being the company’s second-best sales representative in 2020.