Writing bullet points that actually say something
By the FreeCVWriter team · · 2 min read
A good bullet point says what changed because you were the one doing the job. Most bullets describe a job description rather than a person: “Responsible for managing the fulfilment process” tells a reader what you were assigned, not what happened.
Add the outcome and the scale
The fix is usually to add the outcome and the scale. What changed, by roughly how much, across how many people or sites or pounds? “Cut fulfilment time by about a third across three depots” is the same job, described by someone who did it.
Before: Responsible for managing the fulfilment process.
After: Cut average fulfilment time by about a third across three depots by moving picking to two shifts.
Before: Handled customer complaints.
After: Resolved around 40 escalated complaints a week and rewrote the refund script the team still uses.
Before: Worked on the company website.
After: Rebuilt the checkout page, which reduced abandoned baskets in the first month after launch.
When there’s no number
You do not need a number on every line, and you should not invent one. Where there genuinely is no metric, scope works instead: how many people, how often, how large. “Ran a team of fourteen across two shifts” carries weight without pretending to a statistic.
Other honest substitutes for a number: who relied on the work (“used by every regional manager”), what it replaced (“replaced a weekly manual report”), or what it made possible (“let the sales team quote same-day”).
Keep them short
Keep them to a line or two. A bullet that wraps three times is a paragraph wearing a dot. If a single achievement needs more room than that, it probably belongs in your summary or a cover letter, where you can tell it properly.
A quick rewrite checklist
- Start with a verb that says what you did: led, built, cut, trained, negotiated.
- Name the result, even roughly — “about a third” is fine if it’s true.
- Give the scale: people, sites, customers, budget, frequency.
- Delete “responsible for”, “duties included” and “helped with” wherever they appear.
- Put the most relevant bullet for the job you want first under each role.
- Three to five bullets for recent roles; one or two for older ones.
Bullets written this way also do better with software. They contain the job titles, tools and skills a recruiter searches for, in context rather than in a list. See what an ATS does with your CV.