Writing bullets that state a result

Most resume bullets describe a job. The ones that work describe what happened because you were in it. A reader already knows roughly what a marketing assistant or a teaching fellow does. What they cannot guess is what you did differently.

Duty versus result

A duty is what the role asked of you. A result is what changed because you did it. Compare:

The second line says what you did, how, and what it was worth. It also answers the interviewer's first question before they ask it.

A shape that works

Most strong bullets have the same three parts:

• An action verb that names what you did: built, led, cut, launched, wrote.
• The thing itself, specific enough to picture: the tool, the audience, the scale.
• The result: what changed, ideally with a number.

Where the numbers are

People skip numbers because they think they do not have any. Most jobs produce more than you expect. Look for:

• Time: hours saved, a deadline met, a process made faster.
• Money: revenue, savings, a budget you managed.
• Volume: customers served, tickets closed, pages written, events run.
• People: the size of a team you led or trained.
• Change: a percentage up or down, before and after.

An estimate you can explain is fine ("about 200 students a term"). A number you cannot explain in an interview is not.

When there is no number

Some work does not count well. Then name the scope or the outcome instead: who used it, what it replaced, what it made possible.

Order and length

• Put the strongest bullet first in each entry. It is often the only one read.
• Keep each bullet to one or two lines.
• Three to five bullets for a recent role is usually enough. Older roles can have fewer.

In Applican, the review's Bullets stage checks each bullet for a result, a number, and specifics, and Apli proposes rewrites you can approve or decline.