How to write resume bullet points that show results

Most resumes list duties: “Responsible for the company website.” That tells a recruiter what you were supposed to do, not what you achieved. Every other candidate for the role had similar duties. Results are what make you different.

A strong bullet usually has three parts: an action verb, what you did, and what changed because of it. Sometimes the result is a number; sometimes it is a clear outcome such as “adopted by three other teams”.

• Before: “Responsible for the company website.”
• After: “Rebuilt the company website in Next.js, cutting page load time from 4s to 1.5s and increasing sign-ups.”
• Before: “Handled customer complaints.”
• After: “Resolved 40+ customer cases a week and wrote a help-centre guide that reduced repeat tickets.”

Start each bullet with a verb in the past tense for past jobs and present tense for your current job. Prefer specific verbs — built, launched, reduced, automated, negotiated, trained, redesigned — over vague ones like “worked on”, “helped with” or “was involved in”. Avoid starting several bullets in a row with the same word.

Numbers help a recruiter picture your impact, but only use figures you can explain. If you don’t have exact data, use honest approximations (“about 200 users”, “a team of five”) or scale (“for 12 retail stores”). Time, money, volume, speed and quality are all measurable.

Never invent a percentage. Interviewers often ask “how did you measure that?”, and a confident, true answer is worth more than an impressive-sounding number.

Three to six bullets for recent, relevant jobs is plenty; one or two for older roles. Keep each bullet to one or two lines. If a bullet needs three lines, it is probably two achievements — split it.