10 Steps to Creating a Resume That Will Blow Away the Competition – Step 2: Bullet Points

One of the biggest mistakes I see people do with their resumes is to have the information in sentence form.  That’s a big “no no” to hiring managers.  They often have to weed through hundreds of resumes to fill one position.  With the limited time they have to view your resume (often less than two minutes), it’s not likely they will wade through sentences to find the nuggets of information they need to see.

Bullet points allow you to chunk your info into bite-sized pieces that are easily digestible to read.  You have to be concise with a bullet point.  It shouldn’t be any longer than a line and a half or it defeats the purpose of a bullet.

Here is an example of a bullet point from my own resume (in a Microsoft Word document, the length is a line and a half):

• Provided freelance ghostwriting and editing services to several life and business coaches allowing them to effectively market and grow their coaching practices.

You also do not want the bullet point to be shorter than half a line or it looks silly.  Sometimes you can combine two points into one to make it longer.  Just make sure that the points fit together well with similar job duties.

Next time I’ll talk about aligning bullet points.

Warmly,