Crafting Bullet Points for Your Resume
Perhaps the hardest and most time-consuming part of writing your resume is working on the bullet points. How do you balance getting key details while also staying short and concise? This guide will help walk through how to do just that – through using a formula, or specific format to your bullet points.
Why use a formula?
- Helps with consistency and polish.
- Improves the chances of your resume of advancing through ATS (applicant tracking systems).
- Clearly displays your skills and achievements.
- An easy to read, easy to scan resume – keep in mind most recruiters will only spend about 6-8 seconds looking at your resume.
1. Write down your job responsibilities, experiences, and successes
Before actually crafting the bullet points, it can be helpful to write down anything you can think of without structure. Do some free writing or list making of anything you can think of that you’ve done in the role. Take a break then come back to what you’ve written down. What can be combined together in one phrase? What is more important to focus on or is more closely related to the job you’re applying for? If you’re unsure, learn more about tailoring your resume.
2. Start with a strong action verb
Consider the work you’ve done in the role you’re writing about. What skills have you used or actions have you performed? You can use the job description of the role (if you have it available) to help with initial brainstorming or use our resume power verbs sheet to help generate ideas.
3. Use a formula to help structure your information
There are two different formulas we refer to when structuring bullet points. They are very similar, so use what makes the most sense in your mind!
XYZ Formula
Google recruiters claim to love this structure, but it has its own strengths around clarity, relevance, and structure. This format relies on including specific, measurable impacts.
The structure: Accomplished [X] as measured by [Y] by doing [Z].
- Accomplishment (X): Use that strong action verb you identified to grab attention and compellingly illustrate your success.
- Context (Y): Provide background information or context so that the reader has a clear idea of the circumstances to understand the significance and scope of our actions.
- Action (Z): Describe what you did. Give details on what you did to achieve the results and provide concrete examples to demonstrate our capabilities and potential contributions in a new role.
Examples:
- Managed a $7,000 budget (X), creating contracts with 20+ local vendors (Y) for fundraising campaigns (Z).
- Developed strong leadership and teamwork skills in 30+ students by organizing engaging group activities and exercises.
- Designed student survey that yielded 20% increase in student engagement, leading to stronger school identity and positive feedback.
Skill + Task + Scope
This formula is very similar to XYZ, but focuses on a slightly different way of describing your work.
The structure:
- Skill: What you did, what made you good at it
- Task: How you did it, specific job responsibilities
- Scope: Why it mattered, what the result was, what was improved, or what was learned.
Examples:
- Led a team (skill) of 12 volunteers (scope) in recruiting participants and promoting the community blood drive (task) via four info sessions and tabling events (scope).
- Designed external collateral such as emails, ads, and social media posts to increase brand recognition and promote the organization.
- Created and taught World Culture unit to 30 students with diverse learning styles through utilizing multimedia presentations, hands-on activities, and cultural immersion field trips.
The Lens Matters
Regardless of what strategy you use to write your bullet points, it’s important that skills and quantifiable information is included as much as possible. It’s also important to consider what lens you’ll want to display your experiences through as well. Look at these examples below:
Skills: designing, time management, meeting deadlines, multi-tasking
Tasks: Made flyers, emails, ads, social media posts, infographics
Scope: Projects were used to promote and brand the company
Example bullet points:
- Increased brand recognition and promoted the organization by designing external collateral such as emails, ads, and social media posts
- Managed multiple content campaigns including email, ad, and social media posts to increase brand recognition and promote the organization.
Both of these examples involve working the same role, but use a different lens or perspective. The first focuses on designing material while the second focuses more on managing content. Depending on the role you are applying for, you may choose to rephrase or adjust how you’re describing your work to better support what the job is asking for. You have the skills needed, you just need to clearly tell the employer that!
Using AI
AI can be a helpful tool to help draft or edit your bullet points. Before using AI, we recommend reading our AI guide to help you understand how to use the tool ethically and how to craft prompts.