Resume bullet points: the formula and the fixes

The formula

Strong action verb + the specific thing you did + the measurable result: “Rebuilt the checkout flow, lifting conversion 14%”. Weak bullets fail one of the three parts: no verb (“Responsible for checkout”), no specifics (“improved various flows”), or no result (“rebuilt the checkout flow.” — and?).

Before and after

“Worked on customer support” → “Resolved 40+ tickets daily at 96% CSAT, top 3 of a 15-person team”. “Helped with marketing campaigns” → “Wrote email sequences that drove $120k in pipeline over two quarters”. Same jobs, same facts — the second version just states them.

How many bullets

Three to five for recent, relevant roles; one or two for older or less relevant ones. Recruiters read top-down and stop early — your best bullet goes first in every role, not in chronological order of your duties.

No numbers? Use artifacts

If the metric genuinely doesn’t exist, anchor the bullet to something concrete: what you shipped, how often, for whom — “Wrote the onboarding runbook now used by all new hires” works without a percentage. Never invent a number; interviewers probe them.

Start from a working verb

Built, led, cut, grew, shipped, negotiated, automated — the verb carries the bullet. Our builder includes role-matched bullet starters with [add …] placeholders where your real facts go, plus quality warnings on weak openers and missing numbers as you type.

Match the posting’s keywords

Bullets are where keyword matches naturally live — the posting says “stakeholder management”, your bullet should name the stakeholders you managed. Check your match score against any posting with our free ATS checker before you submit.

Finding numbers you forgot you had

Scope counts as a number: team size, budget, users served, tickets per week, clients handled, documents processed, regions covered. Reconstruct honestly from records you have (dashboards, reviews, old reports) — “managed a 6-store territory” is a metric even without revenue attribution.

One idea per bullet

A bullet that says “managed the team, ran the migration, and improved onboarding” buries three achievements where none can land. Split them; if a role has too many bullets after splitting, cut the weakest instead of merging the strong ones back together.

Length: one line, two at most

A bullet that wraps past two lines is a paragraph wearing a disguise. Cut qualifiers (“successfully”, “effectively”), cut the obvious (“as part of my role”), and keep the verb, the specifics, and the number. Under ~20 words reads best.

Tense and person

Past roles: past tense. Current role: present tense for ongoing duties, past for completed wins (“Lead a team of 5; shipped the 2025 replatform”). Never “I” — resume bullets drop the subject by convention, and our builder flags first-person openers.

Bullets by role type

Engineers: name the system and the scale (“cut p95 latency 40% on a service handling 2M req/day”). Sales: quota and rank (“127% of quota, #2 of 14 reps”). Ops: cost and time (“cut close from 10 days to 6”). Support: volume and quality (“40 tickets/day at 96% CSAT”). The pattern is identical — only the nouns change.

The rewrite drill

Take your three weakest bullets. For each, ask: what verb? what exactly? what happened because of it? Rewrite with all three parts, then run the builder’s bullet-quality check — it flags weak openers, missing numbers and overlong lines as you type, free.