Most weak bullet points describe a responsibility: “Responsible for making reports.” A reader learns your job title, not your contribution — and every other applicant with that title wrote the same line.
The three questions a bullet should answer
A stronger bullet answers three questions in one sentence:
- What did you do? Start with a verb: built, cleaned, designed, taught, reduced.
- With what? Name the tool, method or scale.
- What changed? Who used it, or what became faster, cheaper or more accurate.
“Built weekly sales reports in SQL and Excel that the regional team used for planning.” If you have a number you can stand behind, add it. If you do not, leave it out — an invented figure is easy to question in an interview.
Before and after
- Before: “Worked on the college fest website.” After: “Built the college fest website in React and handled registrations for 1,200 students.”
- Before: “Handled customer queries.” After: “Answered 40–50 customer queries a day by phone and email, and wrote the reply templates the team still uses.”
- Before: “Did an internship in marketing.” After: “Planned and posted three months of Instagram content for a local brand; followers grew from 800 to 2,100.”
Each “after” is something you could talk about for two minutes in an interview. That is the test of a good bullet.
If you are a fresher
You do not need a job to write strong bullets. Projects, internships, college societies, part-time work and competitions all count. Apply the same three questions: what you did, with what, and what changed.
Keep the format simple
- Plain text, one date style, no tables or text boxes for skills — screening software reads them badly.
- Two to five bullets per role; put the most relevant one first.
- One line each where you can, two at most.