Most resume bullets are a list of duties, and they repeat what the job description said you would do. A reader has seen that list many times. What they have not seen is what happened because you were there. This post is about the shape of a single bullet, the verb it starts with, and which duties to cut.
If your bullets lack figures, the five questions in this post help you find them. This post comes before that step: it fixes the sentence so the figure has somewhere to go.
The three parts of a bullet
Write each bullet as three short parts, in this order. First the action: a verb for what you did. Then the object: the thing you did it to, with enough detail to be specific. Last the change: what was different afterwards, or what it allowed.
Here is the same line before and after. Both are examples made up for this post.
| Duty | Action, object and change |
|---|---|
| Responsible for the shared inbox | Cleared the shared inbox daily, so no customer waited more than a working day for a first answer |
| Worked on the grant reports | Wrote the quarterly grant reports for [Programme], and the funder accepted each one without a request for changes |
| Helped with onboarding | Wrote a one page checklist for new volunteers, and each new volunteer started a shift in the first week |
The right-hand lines are longer, but each one can be checked and each one answers the reader’s silent question: so what?
You do not always have all three parts. Two is often enough. “Wrote the quarterly grant reports for [Programme]” is a fair bullet by itself. A third part is worth adding when you really know it, and not worth inventing when you do not.
Choose the verb with care
The verb carries the most weight in the line, so use a plain one. “Wrote”, “built”, “ran”, “trained”, “fixed”, “sold” and “translated” say what happened. Long verbs add nothing.
Pick the verb that is true. “Led” means people followed you. “Managed” means you were responsible for people or a budget. “Supported” means someone else did the main work. A bigger verb than the facts earn is easy for an interviewer to test.
Match the tense to the date: past tense for finished roles, present tense only for the job you hold now. Vary the verbs on one page, because five bullets starting with “Managed” read as one bullet repeated.
Avoid the verbs that hide the action: “responsible for”, “involved in”, “assisted with”, “worked on”. They tell the reader a topic and no deed. If you did assist, say what part you did: “Drafted the budget tables for a proposal that [Organisation] submitted”.
Cutting the duties list
Most resumes are too long because of duties. Use this test on every line: would a person in this job do this by default? “Answered phones and emails” belongs to almost every office job. It tells the reader nothing, so cut it. “Attended weekly team meetings” is the same. “Used Microsoft Office” is a skill, not a duty, so put it in the skills section if the posting asks for it and remove it from the bullets.
Keep a duty when it is unusual for the role, when the scale is unusual, or when the posting asks for it. “Answered phones” is not worth a line. “Answered the only emergency line for a team of 30” is.
A practical limit helps. For a role that ended more than ten years ago, keep two or three bullets at most. For your current or latest role, keep four to six. For each role, put the line that matches the target job first. The one page or two post covers the order in which to cut.
Bullets for different kinds of work
The three parts work in any field. Illustrative: every line below is invented.
| Kind of work | Action and object | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Customer support | Rewrote the five most used reply templates | Repeat contacts on those topics fell within a month |
| Sales | Called every lapsed account from the last two years | Twelve came back as customers in one quarter |
| Teaching | Set up a weekly reading group for the lowest stream | Eight of ten students moved up a level by the end of the year |
| Administration | Moved the paper leave forms to a shared sheet | Managers approved leave in a day instead of a week |
| Nonprofit programmes | Trained 15 community volunteers to run intake | The clinic opened a second intake day |
Each change is something a former manager could confirm. If you cannot name a change that a manager would confirm, keep the first two parts and stop.
One role, before and after
Illustrative: the role and the employer are invented.
Before:
- Responsible for office administration
- Handled supplier invoices
- Assisted with events
- Answered phones and emails
After:
- Paid about 60 supplier invoices a month and cleared a three month backlog in the first six weeks
- Planned the annual partner meeting for 120 guests, from venue to follow-up survey
- Set up a shared calendar for meeting rooms, ending double bookings
The phone line is gone because every office job has one. The other three now say what happened. The list is shorter and says more.
Say what you did, not what the team did
Group work is common, and a reader still wants to know your part. Leave out the pronoun and name your part: “Wrote the test plan for a six person release” says more than “Contributed to a successful release”. If you cannot separate your part from the team’s, that is a sign to ask yourself what you did, before you write the line.
Translate local terms
If you worked in a different country or sector, the reader may not know your job title or your institution. Add a few plain words: “Ministry of [Name], a national health agency” or “a regional NGO with 40 staff”. Avoid abbreviations that only your last employer used. Do not translate a title into a bigger one. Keep your official title, and explain the work in the bullets.
Patterns that weaken a bullet
- Adjectives about yourself. “Hardworking” and “detail oriented” are claims. The bullet’s facts should show them.
- “We”. It hides your part. Name what you did.
- A list of tools. “Used Excel, Word, Outlook and Teams” is a skills line, not a bullet.
- A figure with no context. “Handled 300 tickets” means little without a period or a comparison. Say “300 a month” or “the most on a team of eight”, if true.
- A claim you cannot explain. If an interviewer asked “how?”, could you answer for two minutes? If not, rewrite it smaller.
A ten minute pass
Take your most recent role. Rewrite every bullet that starts with “responsible for” as an action. Mark any bullet where a reader could ask “so what?” and add the change if you know it. Cut every duty that comes with the job by default. Then read the first word of each bullet and change the repeats.
Read the result aloud. If you run out of breath in the middle of a bullet, split it into two or cut the weaker half.
Keep the layout plain. The UK’s National Careers Service suggests that you use headings and bullet points to make it easier to read, and that you list your most recent experience first. Bullets work because a reader can scan them, so keep each one to a line or two.
Questions people ask
How long should a resume bullet be?
One sentence, one or two lines. If a bullet needs three lines, it is two bullets.
Should I write “I” in bullets?
Usually not. Start with the verb. The reader knows the resume is about you.
How many bullets per role?
Four to six for your latest role and two or three for older ones, with the line that matches the target job first.
What if my job had no results I can measure?
Use the first two parts, action and object, and add a change only when you know it. The post on bullets without numbers helps you find the change.
What we know and what we do not
Zorlya’s resume tailor takes your own resume text and writes five bullets that restate your work in a posting’s words. Each starts with a past tense verb and is one sentence of 25 words at most. It keeps the numbers you wrote and is instructed to add none and to invent nothing. It works from your sentences, so the clearer your bullets are, the better its suggestions will be. Zorlya cannot know whether a change you claim is true, so the tailor only restates what your resume already says. Allowances per plan are on the pricing page.
The advice on writing bullets is Zorlya’s own judgment, not a researched fact. We did not test it against a study or an employer survey, and we cite no outside source for it.