Building Strong Resume Bullet Points

I'm back to give you the tea about resume bullet points! 😎

If you haven’t yet read about how to improve your resume design and content I suggest you go here and here first.

Let's get right to it. Crafting compelling and strong bullet points is usually the hardest part of drafting your resume. People be feeling like...😩

It's true it can be hard, but I'm here to give you some clues and tips about how to phrase your bullet points so they are sharp.

The biggest mistake I see people make when writing bullet points is folks usually only list tasks and responsibilities. NO NO NO.

Remember, your resume needs to be a persuasive document that converts to interviews.

People want to understand what impact you've had in your past roles. Bullet points need to show your accomplishments and achievements. Ideally, they are phrased as quantitative achievements (with numbers). 

You might be thinking, "uhh, I can't quantify my work because I was a nanny or virtual assistant or dog walker or an intern or whatever else."

You can quantify any job if you think creatively about what you did and how it made an impact. 📣

I've helped clients land tech jobs who had various previous career backgrounds including a teacher, a musician, a retails sales associate, an artist, a consultant, a student...and the list goes on. They were able to show off what they accomplished in their past jobs.

No job is too obscure to quantify your achievements!

Ok so how do you do it?


The Formula for Strong Bullet Points

Action Verb, Contribution (or Task), Impact, + add Numbers/Metrics to contribution or impact

Let's break it down.

• Action verb: Start all your bullet points with a strong verb to get right to the point. I suggest using key verbs relevant to the role you are targeting.

  e.g. Created, Managed, Built, Designed, Conducted, Analyzed, Wrote, Led, Developed, Coded, Researched, Sold, Launched, etc.

• Contribution or Task: What tasks were you responsible for in your job? How did you contribute? List them out and try to be specific about what you did and how you contributed.

• Impact: Explain the impact your daily tasks and contributions had on the company, team, or project. How did your work move the needle? Why was it important? No matter how small or insignificant you think your work was figure out a way to show off how it helped move things forward.

  Think about starting this part of the bullet point with phrases like "resulting in...", "increasing xzy", "decreasing abc", "allowing for...", etc.

• Add Numbers or Metrics: Quantifying any part of your bullet points will strengthen them. You don't need to know exact numbers, ballpark numbers are ok. Try to add a number to every bullet. It looks impressive and shows your specific impact on the business.

Examples of weak bullet points revised into strong bullet points:

• Bad - "Provided customer service for retail clients.

  Better - "Managed 30+ daily customer service inquiries and ran multiple department responsibilities in a fast-paced retail environment."

• Bad - "I moderated testing to help projects reach their outcomes."

  Better - “Conduct contextual interviews and moderated testing for 50+ internal operators to identify usability issues.”

• Bad - "Onboarded new employees "

  Better - “Implement onboarding process, resulting in 2x program placement rates and increasing employee engagement and retention.”

• Bad - "I ran marketing strategies for key audiences that increased conversions."

  Better - "Identified key audiences & designed targeted content strategies supporting a 15% QoQ increase in conversions."

That's the ☕️. Hope it's helpful.