ExperienceWriting your CV6 min read
How to write CV bullet points that show results
Your work experience is the longest part of your CV and the part recruiters trust most. Most people fill it with duties. Employers hire for results, so the difference between a list of tasks and a list of achievements is the difference between a skim and an interview.
Updated 10 October 2026
Duties tell what the job was. Results tell how you did it.
“Responsible for customer emails” describes the role, and every person in that role could say it. Recruiters want to know what changed because you were there: faster, cheaper, bigger, safer, more accurate.
Action verbWhat you didResult
“Reduced average ticket handling time by 35% by writing 40 reusable answers for the most common questions.”
The same job, written two ways
Instead of
- Responsible for social media accounts.
- Helped organise events.
- Worked on the company newsletter.
Write
- Grew Instagram following from 2,000 to 9,500 in a year with a weekly video series.
- Organised 6 customer events for up to 120 guests, on a 15% lower budget than the year before.
- Rewrote the monthly newsletter, lifting the open rate from 21% to 34%.
Each strong line starts with a verb, says what was done and ends on something you could check.
When you have no numbers
Not every result has a percentage. Look for scale and change instead. You can almost always say how many, how often, how big, how fast, or what was different afterwards.
- ScaleHow many customers, orders, files, people or countries? “Handled 60 tickets a day” says more than “handled tickets”.
- Before and afterWhat was the problem, and what did you change? “Replaced a manual spreadsheet with a shared dashboard.”
- TrustWere you asked to train others, cover for a manager or take the hard cases? Say so: “Chosen to onboard 4 new hires.”
Never invent a figure. If you estimate, say so with “about”, and be ready to explain how you got it in the interview.
Start with a strong verb, in the right tense
Open each bullet with a verb that shows your part: led, built, negotiated, cut, launched, trained, designed. Use the past tense for finished jobs and the present for your current one. Vary the verbs, because five “managed” in a row reads as a lack of range.
Avoid
- Starting with “Responsible for”, “Duties included” or “Helped with”: they hide your own part.
- More than five or six bullets for one job, or bullets longer than two lines.
- Listing every old task. Keep the ones most relevant to the job you want.
- Mixing tenses and styles inside the same role.
- 3 to 6 bullets per job
- Verb, action, result
- Max two lines each
- Most relevant first