Maximize The Bullets On The Most Relevant Roles
Your work history will carry different weights and relevance to the job you are applying for. Some jobs are very relevant, while others are barely relevant to the new role. You should use the significance of the experience to determine where to add more bullets and where to use the minimum number of bullets.
Also, the most recent jobs should have more detail than jobs you did many years ago or when you started your career. Use bullets to explain your roles, core competencies, and achievements in the job experience most relevant to your desired job. That way, the employer will see the value you can bring to their company by looking at what you have accomplished in the past roles.
Jon Hill, the CEO, and Chairman of the Texas-based executive renewable energy search firm, The Energists, shared the following about relevant roles and bullets:
As a broad range, I would say you want 2-6 bullet points under each position. To get a bit more specific, I recommend having 4-6 bullet points under the 1-2 jobs that are the most directly relevant to the position or company youre applying for and only put 2-3 bullet points under those roles more tangentially related.
This helps emphasize the jobs most likely to add value for the person reviewing your resume and how this experience has prepared you for said role.
When Can You Use Bullet Points For Your Resume
Include bullet points when you are using a chronological or combination resume. Both of these kinds of resumes focus on your previous work experiences. Bullet points are not as useful for a functional resume that focuses more on in-depth skills rather than experience.
Related:Top Resume Formats: Tips and Examples of 3 Common Resumes
Give Context To Your Accomplishments
While your first bullet should share your most impressive accomplishments, it should also give context so the hiring manager fully understands your role. You could include information on the type of company you worked in, the yearly revenue, the number of clients served or the scope of operations.
In this example, you will see a bullet that is impressive but which doesn’t provide any context:
-
Spearheaded the execution of the agency’s digital marketing initiatives by creating copy that improved search engine results and increased website traffic by 35%
Recommended Reading: How To Upload Resume To Linkedin 2020
Resume Bullet Point Examples
Before jumping into examples, heres our top piece of advice: Add quantifiable data. Listing awards, certifications, and quantifiable data shows employers that you’re a go-getter. It shows what you actually did. For example, instead of writing a bullet point that says, “Provided customer service, write one that says, Provided customer services for over 200+ guests a night. Thats a quick way to showcase your quick skills and efficiency.
Its hard to move forward with creating a resume without examples. Were going to be illustrating more examples, just like the one above. Each example is for a random job, but focus on the fact that they all offer quantifiable data.
Here are some bullet point examples to model your resume after:
- Planned, marketed, and coordinated panels for audiences of 2550 people on a monthly basis
- Increased attendance to events by 70%
- Grew email list by 30% in 3 months
Did you notice that these examples also showcase accomplishments, not responsibilities? Show how you helped and made a difference at your workplace, rather than just listing what your responsibilities were.
One Bullet Point Says One Thing
Your bullet point loses its meaning of focusing on a single thing as soon as it talks about many things. A paragraph focuses on many things, not a bullet point. Example
- Teach instrumental techniques, scales, sight-reading and music theory.
- Help prepare students for auditions and live performances. Organise and facilitate musical performances for the school community.
The three different points here talk about three things:
- Teaching students
- Organising events at school
Read Also: What To Say When Sending Your Resume Via Email
When To Use Bullet Points In A Resume
You should use bullet points on your resume in your work experience section to list your duties and accomplishments. How many bullet points per job on a resume? This depends on how many jobs you include and how much space you have for each, but between 2-4 is a good number. Remember you need to keep your resume as short and concise as possible.
You can also use bullet points in other sections such as your skills, education, and accomplishments. In general, if theres a choice between writing resume bullet points or paragraphs it is generally better to choose bullet points.
Should You Use Bullet Points For Your Resume
Using bullet points in your resume is a great way to help employers notice your skills and qualifications that relate to the open role. You can use bullet points when you want to show your responsibilities and achievements for each of your previous jobs. Your
To upload the template into Google Docs, go to File > Open > and select the correct downloaded file.
Also Check: What To Write On The Subject Line For Email Resume
Bullet Points For Your Resume Skills Section
Your resume introduction and experience section arent the only sections of your resume where you can use bullet points
Depending on the resume template you choose, your skills section might also include bullet points.
Listing skills in the form of bullet points is a straightforward process. Like with bullet points in your experience section, they dont need to be complete sentences. A skills section written in bullet point format should look like this:
Write down one skill for each bullet point to prevent your resume from looking cluttered.
Do Not Overuse Bullet Points
We know you are inspired to put all your data into your resume to impress the recruiter, but it is not the right approach. Too many bullet points create overwhelm and demotivate the recruiter from reading your resume. Keep up to 8 bullet points for each job description if you cannot contain your information in less than that. You can also club your bullets under sub-heading for a neat format.
Also Check: How To Upload A Resume From Google Drive
Resume Bullet Point Examples From A Workplace Safety And Organizational Compliance Professional:
- Successfully reduced workers compensation injuries from 20 to 2 in a one-year period through the introduction of a comprehensive employee incentive program.
- Brought organization back into federal compliance by establishing an organization-wide Leave of Absence process.
- Received corporate-wide Employee of the Year Award and multiple Employee of the Month Awards .
This resume quickly earned the candidate an interview, followed by a job offer, as a result of effectively communicating both their responsibilities and associated accomplishments.
Instead of focusing on what they do day-to-day , they highlight the end goal of their efforts . They then wrap it up with a final bullet that further backs up their accomplishments.
By: Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES, Career Coach at CaffeinatedKyle.com
Resume Bullet Point Examples From A Cio Resume:
- Earned 2015 CIO of the Year Finalist accolades from the ___ Business Journal for directing a sustainable IT and global ERP strategy that supported 2.5X revenue growth to $3.5B through acquisition and regional expansion.
- Reduced annual expenses 15% by leading cost reduction, quality improvements, productivity initiatives and infrastructure enhancements supporting business systems, core network and security.
- Launched a 5-year, $32M strategy that integrated acquisitions to IT, corporate standards, core business platforms and governance for this company with 50+ global manufacturing + sales facilities.
These resume bullets are proof you dont need to be in sales to show quantifiable achievements. They are effective because they highlight skills key to CIO successdirecting strategies that ensure IT supports executive vision for growth through expansion and acquisition, and by reducing bottom-line expenses.
By: Virginia Franco, Founder of Virginia Franco Resumes and Forbes contributor
You May Like: How To Show Promotion On Resume
The Purpose Of Resume Bullet Points
The primary aim of bullet points is to highlight what makes you the ideal candidate. They also keep the content of your resume grouped into easy-to-navigate sections. When including bullet points in your resume, keep in mind that they should be short and to the point. Still, your resume bullet points should fulfill these three main goals:
- Emphasize the most critical information
- Improve the readability of your resume and make it easy to scan through
- Communicate your relevant accomplishments
Excel Specialist Resume: Professional Experience
Here are the tips to follow when creating the professional experience section of your resume:
- Start the professional experience with your most recent experience and follow the reverse chronological format for writing the professional experience section.
- Read the job description and tailor your experience to fit the job description.
- Excel experts with data and numbers. Similarly, quantify your professional experience in the excel expert resume.
- Write the experiences in single line bullet points
- Make sure you highlight essential keywords and statistics in the excel expert resume to make it more scannable
- Club 2-3 related bullet points under one skill sub-heading. It improves readability
- Start the bullet points with power verbs but try to use different power verbs for other profiles.
- Use the cause & effect format when writing the excel resume bullet points.
Heres the experience section of a Excel Specialist Resume :
RIGHT
Data Optimization & Database Management
- Organized rate card data into excel sheet for facilitating effective export operations
- Managed & cleaned old financial data from the database and uploaded current data into the financial systems
Data Backup & Error Management
- Performed weekly data-backup to reduce the risk of data loss
- Compared source data with system entries to detect errors for ensuring 100% accurate end results
WRONG
Don’t Miss: How To Make A Federal Resume
Adding Accomplishments And Impact:
Employers review resumes to understand the impact youve had on a project, organization, or company. For instance:
- Were the materials and publicizing efforts successful?
- Did these actions result in reaching a new group of students?
Review each statement youve created for your resume. Can you add an accomplishment or achievement? What happened as a result of that action? How did it benefit the organization? You dont need to add a result to every bullet point on your resume, but its helpful to demonstrate achievements when possible.
What does this look like? In the bullet point about marketing materials and social media, this might read:
- Create marketing materials and publicize events through social media. Increased attendance at several club programs by 75%
- Create marketing materials and publicize events through social media. Saw increased attendance at several club programs throughout the year
These statements combine the Action and Result sections of the STAR method.
How To Use Bullet Points In Your Resume To Stand Out
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
Since many employers only spend a few seconds looking at each resume to find qualified candidates, you want your resume to be as succinct as possible. You should choose a resume format that is easy to scan and makes your qualifications stand out to employers. Using bullet points to explain your work experience and skills is a great way to do this.
In this article, we explain how to effectively use bullet points in your resume.
Don’t Miss: What’s The Difference Between Cv And Resume
Do Lead With Whats Most Important
Hiring managers skim your resume bullets, so you want to have the most important information first. Since we know that the eye scans downward, following this rule will increase your odds that these crucial details will be seen. For example:
- Oversaw commercial operations for global travel agency serving nearly 15,000 customers each year, including corporate accounts and celebrity clientele.
- Spearheaded initiative to introduce new destinations, developing partnerships with international tour operators located throughout Asia and Europe to expand revenue channels.
While both of these bullets are impressive, the first bullet provides a broader description of the individuals responsibilities and role within the organization, so it makes sense that its placed above one thats narrower in scope.
To decide how to order your bullets, ask yourself: If the hiring manager could only read two on your list, which two would you want him or her to read?
Resume Of Legal Writer
- Collaborate with the editorial team and social media manager to deliver engaging blog posts and newsletters.
- Research and create informational content to help the users find answers to their most pressing legal questions.
- Optimise content using best practices in tagging, keyword usage, headline creation, and SEO.
- Assist editors and senior writers in content production and editing tasks including topic sourcing, copyediting and content maintenance.
- Compare documents word for word against originals to ensure an accurate conversion
- Conduct separate checks for format, text accuracy and statistical data
- Ensure accuracy, clarity and completeness of the content.
Check full resume of Legal Writer in text format here
Read Also: How To List Church Volunteer Work On Resume
How To Write Excellent Resume Bullet Points
The Indeed Editorial Team comprises a diverse and talented team of writers, researchers and subject matter experts equipped with Indeed’s data and insights to deliver useful tips to help guide your career journey.
Resumes are a key component of a job application package. As a job applicant, it is helpful to include thoughtful and impactful skills and qualifications in your resume through bullet points. Well-written bullet points improve your chances of getting an interview and a job. In this article, we discuss the importance of good resume bullet points and how to write them, with examples and tips.
Related: How To Write a Resume: Past or Present Tense?
Resume Of Marketing & Communications Manager
- Collaborate with company executives to craft corporate messaging, branding strategies, benefits-based marketing materials, and sales-driving collateral.
- Create SEO- enhanced website content, and monitor associated web analytics to ensure effectiveness.
- Develop public relations and manage two public relations agencies to increase market visibility.
- Conduct quantitative market research surveys to measure customer opinions and gauge market trends.
Check full resume of Marketing & Communications Manager in text format here
Recommended Reading: How To Prepare 2 Year Experience Resume
How Many Bullet Points Should You Use Per Job On A Resume
Thats a hard estimate to make, as it depends largely on your previous experience.
But we will get to that part later on.
For now, lets discuss whats the perfect middle, how many bullet points should you include per job on your resume, so that it would look its best.
As each resume should include many sections – , , , , , and sections, you need to keep each brief.
The work experience section is arguably the most important one on your resume, and thus it usually takes more space than any other section.
But make sure you know your resumes limits, dont make any job so long that you cannot fit any of the other important sections for your resume.
When it comes to the number of bullet points, it varies a lot.
It depends largely on how old is the job position you are listing.
If it comes to your current job, you can go up to 8 bullet points, but when you do so, make sure to pick one area of expertise and make the whole bullet list revolve around it.
The further away in the past the job position is, the less bullet points it needs. You can shrink the list up to 1-2 bullet points in these cases.
But the perfect middle for a number of bullet points per job on a resume would be between 3 and 5.
A bullet list with between 3 and 5 bullet points in it is considered to be the most pleasant to the eye and is actually psychologically more effective.
If you find yourself with a bullet list that is too long, you can always consider including some of your points in the instead.
Make The First Bullet The Best
The first bullet point of each position should be the best. You want to capture the attention of the hiring manager with a strong start.
Use numbers and power verbs wherever possible, especially for the first bullet point.
Just to recap, use bullet points instead of paragraphs on your professionally written resume as it’s more visually appealing, reader friendly and easy for a hiring manager to skim through. If you have a lot of relevant information, you could include a couple of sentences as an intro so you don’t go over 6 bullet points.
Remember to keep your bullet points relevant and use numbers wherever possible which really captures the attention of a hiring manager.
Good luck with your job search!
Also Check: How To Link Linkedin Profile On Resume
Where To Use Bullet Points In A Resume
The most common sections to insert bulleted items include:
- Qualifications summary: This summary statement at the top of the resume should list the main qualifications and qualities you possess that align with the requirements in the job listing. List your skills and accomplishments as bullet points below the section heading.
- Work experience: For any past jobs you list on a chronological or combination resume, convey the duties and accomplishments that relate to the job in bullet points below the relevant job heading. If you’re not sure which skills and achievements are most important, review the job listing and use bullet points on a resume to emphasize the qualifications you have that match the job.
- Education: Bullet points aren’t just for work history. You can also include bullet points in a resume to describe your achievements in educational experiences. For example, under the heading for your educational experience, you can list bullets for the awards, scholarships, and other kudos that relate to a degree you earned.
- Volunteering: Be sure to include any service-oriented duties and accomplishments below the heading for volunteering experiences.
- Skills: Use bullet points to detail languages you know, software and other tools you’re well versed in, and soft skills like leadership or communication.