Work Experience on a Resume — The Section Everything Else Supports
Recruiters read your most recent role and roughly four bullets before deciding. Every other section exists to get them there, which makes this the only part worth agonising over.
The Anatomy of One Entry
Six components, in this order. Consistency across entries matters as much as the content inside them.
Your real title, but add a plain-English equivalent in brackets if yours is internal jargon. Nobody outside your company searches for Analyst III.
If the employer is not well known, add six words: a 40-person logistics software firm. Recruiters cannot judge scale from a name they have never seen.
Always both, always the same format throughout. Year-only ranges are read as hiding something, even when they are not.
City and country, or Remote. It answers a question the recruiter would otherwise have to guess at.
Most recent role gets five or six, the one before three or four, older ones two. The taper is itself information about what matters.
A duty is what the job description said. An accomplishment is what changed because you were the one doing it. Only the second kind earns space.
Action verb, then what you did, then the measurable result, then the method if it fits. Rebuilt the weekly reconciliation in SQL, cutting close time from twelve days to five. One line, one accomplishment, one number. If a bullet has no number, it needs a scale or a scope instead — never nothing.
Eight Steps to Write the Section
Written in this order it takes an hour. Written in any other order it takes a weekend and reads worse.
Highlight what the target role actually needs. Your bullets are a selection from your history against that list, not a complete record of it.
Write twenty rough bullets per recent role with no concern for wording. Selecting from twenty produces far better six than trying to write six.
Percentage, money, time, volume, headcount, frequency. Dig for it in old reports and dashboards — estimating a defensible figure is fine, inventing one is not.
If the sentence would be true of anyone who held the title, delete it. Responsible for is the tell.
The strongest three words go first. Readers scan the left edge of the page and stop mid-line constantly.
Five or six bullets on the current job, dropping to two on anything over ten years old. Equal weight everywhere wastes the reader's attention.
Four bullets starting Managed reads as one job done four times. Vary them, but never at the cost of accuracy.
Ask whether someone who does not know your company could tell what you actually changed. If not, add scale or context.
Eight Bullets, Before and After
The before versions are all real patterns. Each fails for a different reason.
Duty, not accomplishment
Before: "Responsible for managing the company social media accounts." After: "Grew combined social following from 4,000 to 27,000 in 14 months; shifted budget to short video after it outperformed static posts 6 to 1."
No number anywhere
Before: "Improved the onboarding process for new customers." After: "Redesigned customer onboarding, cutting time-to-first-value from 21 days to 9 and reducing first-month churn by a third."
Vague scale
Before: "Managed a large team of support staff." After: "Managed 14 support agents across two time zones, handling roughly 3,000 tickets a month."
Buried the result
Before: "Worked with the engineering team on a project to look at how we could reduce page load times." After: "Cut median page load from 4.2s to 1.6s with engineering, lifting mobile conversion 12%."
Company jargon
Before: "Owned the CX2 workstream within the ATLAS programme." After: "Led the customer-data migration workstream — 2.4 million records across three legacy systems — within a company-wide platform replacement."
Team credit, no personal action
Before: "We rolled out a new CRM across the business." After: "Ran the CRM rollout for 90 users: built the training, migrated the data, and got adoption to 85% within six weeks."
Too long to scan
Before: a four-line sentence with three clauses and two semicolons. After: split into two bullets, each under two lines, each with one accomplishment and one number.
Soft claim, no evidence
Before: "Excellent communicator who builds strong relationships with stakeholders." After: "Ran the monthly steering group for five department heads; secured sign-off on the £240k tooling budget at first submission."
Eight Rules for the Bullets Themselves
Mechanical, and each one visibly improves a resume within minutes.
Two achievements in one line means the second is never read. Split them or drop the weaker one.
Built, cut, led, negotiated, automated. Responsible for describes a job description; a verb describes you.
Anything longer stops being scanned and starts being skipped. Two lines is the practical ceiling.
Present tense for the current one only. Mixed tense within a single role is one of the most common small errors.
If the outcome cannot be measured, describe the size of what you handled — 14 agents, 3,000 tickets, three legacy systems.
Resume bullets are conventionally written without it. Starting with the verb is shorter and reads as standard.
Managed four times in one entry flattens four different achievements into one impression.
If it says stakeholder management, use that phrase where it is genuinely true. ATS matches terms, and human readers match them faster too.
Four Awkward Cases and What to Do
Most real work histories contain at least one of these.
Several short stints in a row
Group contract or agency work under one heading — Contract Roles, 2022–2024 — and list clients as bullets. It reads as one deliberate phase rather than four departures.
A promotion at the same company
One company block, with each title and its dates nested underneath. It shows progression; two separate entries hide it and look like two jobs.
A long gap between roles
Leave it visible and address it in one line — a study period, caring responsibilities, a deliberate search. Concealing it with year-only dates reads far worse than the gap.
Fifteen or more years of history
Cover the last ten to twelve in detail, then a single Earlier Career line listing titles and employers without dates or bullets.
"Operations Analyst (Supply Chain) — Northwind Logistics, a 200-person freight software firm. Manchester, UK. March 2023 – present. Rebuilt the weekly demand forecast in SQL, cutting the reporting cycle from twelve days to five. Renegotiated nine carrier contracts, saving £180k annually. Led the migration of three legacy inventory systems into one platform across four warehouses."
Six Mistakes in This Section
If the line would be true of anyone with your title, it is a duty. Say what changed because it was you.
Numbers are what a stranger can evaluate. Where an outcome cannot be measured, give the scale of what you handled.
Taper it — six on the current role, two on a job from twelve years ago. Space signals importance.
Use month and year consistently. Year-only ranges are widely read as concealing short tenures, even when they are not.
Nobody outside your last employer knows what ATLAS was. Describe it in plain terms with its scale.
Reorder and reword the bullets against each posting. The strongest three should always match what that job asked for.