Make Your Resume Bullets More Effective

A resume provides information about who you are as a job candidate. It helps a prospective employer understand how you can benefit his or her company. Resume bullets are often used to emphasize skills or key points you want to make that are relevant to a particular job. It’s important, however, to present these bullet points in a way that makes them see more interesting to an employer. One college career specialist offers a four step process to get entry level job seekers started:

1. Skills – Focus on any job skills you’ve acquired, not the job duty itself (ex.- leadership skills).
2. Structure – Create a statement that combines the skills you learned with the job duty (ex.- I learned [skills] by doing/because/while [job duty]).
3. Verb – Change “I learned” to begin your bullet point with a more eye catching verb (ex.- I acquired leadership skills by working on a group project).
4. Clarify – Let’s say your original bullet was “worked on group project”. Now, you can be more specific with your bullet point by answering questions such as who, what, where, when, and why. For example, if you wanted to focus on who you worked with and the type of project, you might say the following:
Revised bullet – Acquired leadership skills in marketing campaign alongside management team.
I like this approach to an entry level job candidate’s resume bullets. By following this four step process, you can go from having plain bullet points to more appealing bullet points. As a result, your resume could stand out from the competition.
Information provided by Cindy Norberg.
Source
Campus Career Counselor – June 2009

Originally posted by William Frierson