Crafting the Perfect Resume Bullet
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of opinions on what makes a resume stand out. I’m here to dispel the most popular resume best practice: leading each bullet with an action verb. I’ve seen this repeatedly: “Start your bullets with an action verb like championed, steered, drove, increased, or captured.” What if I told you there was a better way to stand out?
First, it’s not wrong to recommend including action verbs in your resume. Your resume should be filled with action verbs, but I don’t believe each bullet should be focused on starting with the action verb. Here is a typical bullet structure pushed by most resume writers today:
Delivered 15 consecutive projects across digital and print campaigns, reaching 10M viewers and increasing engagement by 3X.
Here’s what’s wrong with this advice. The initial scan of your resume is six seconds, and we know people read resumes in an F-pattern (across the top and then down the left side). The achievement in this bullet is not delivering 15 consecutive projects, nor is it reaching 10M viewers. The achievement is increasing engagement by 3X. If the reader scans the resume in an F-pattern, they are most likely not reading the entire bullet. You aren't standing out if they all get “Delivered 15 consecutive projects” before moving to the following line.
Instead, write your bullets with the achievement first. It should look like this:
3X increase in engagement captured by delivering 15 consecutive projects across digital and print campaigns, reaching 10M viewers.
When possible, start each bullet with a number - quantifying your achievements is your priority when creating a resume. When you shift the narrative from “Delivered 15 consecutive projects” to “3X increase in engagement,” you have their attention, and in return, the dwell time of your resume goes up. Now they have to know what you did to get those results!
If you don’t have quantifiable metrics, lead your bullet with the action verb. Using the same example would look like this:
Increased engagement by delivering 15 consecutive projects across digital and print campaigns, reaching 10M viewers.
Additional things to consider when creating bullets for your resume:
Keep the number of bullets around 3-6. If you have more than six bullets, break up the list using subheadings and group “like” bullets under a particular subheading. For example, if you have ten bullets, five that highlight your leadership skills and five that highlight your strategy skills, create two subheadings titled “Leadership” and “Strategy.” This breaks up a long list of bullets into an easier-to-digest format.
Only share relevant details that target the positions you are applying to. For example, if you are currently a people manager but want to move back into an individual contributor role, don’t take up space describing your people management experience, team size, team attrition, or team sentiment scores. While these are all great talking points for a management resume, they are not crucial for an individual contributor role.
Diversify the use of the action verbs that you use. Instead of saying “increased” repeatedly, switch it to “lifted, raised, grew, etc.”
Your resume is the trailer of your feature film, which means you want to highlight the most impressive stories related to your career goals.
