Blog Post: Bullets in your Résumé

Lots of bullets in a row make a super résumé, right?

Not really. What happens when you have a lot of bullets in a row is the same thing that happens when you have a lot of lines of text in a row…the hiring manager sees a block of text instead of the details. He/she glazes over and skips exactly the information you thought you were highlighting.

How about combining a lot of material after each bullet…say two or three lines?

Same difficulty. The impact of the bullet is lost because there is just too much information.  

So what is an effective way to use bullets?

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First list your Job Title, Company Name, City, State, Years worked. Write an overall narrative description of your position. If your job entailed significant accomplishments in several areas, sort those accomplishments by categories and create subsections.

        BULLETS

Organize your material. Create a descriptive section where you talk about a specific subset of skills related to that job. Use action verbs. This narrative section does not have numbers. The bulleted section which follows does.

        ·         List a series of 2 to 4 single line bullets citing accomplishments

        ·         Every bullet has a number, dollars saved, reports prepared

        ·         If it doesn’t have a number, it goes up in the narrative

        ·         Don’t list more than 4 bullets

        MORE INFORMATION

In the case where you have more four bullets, include the most significant. If you still need more than that, reanalyze your information to determine how your subset can be broken into two smaller subsets.

        ·         Write 2 to 4 bullets under your new category

        ·         Think of what the hiring manager will be looking for

Effective bullet use will make your résumé easy to read and informative. Your ability to effectively organize and present your material is viewed as a representation of how well you will organize and present your work. Make bullets work for you.