The Resume Silver Bullet

Photo credit: wmode / CC BY-NC 2.0

Formatting a resume is a lot easier than you probably think. It doesn’t take a lot of fancy fonts, graphics or layouts. In fact, there’s a “silver bullet” of sorts – one simple, straight-forward way to make any document look more organized and more readable. What is this magic formatting trick? Behold the beautiful bullet point:

• Bullets help create a clear organizational structure on the page.
• Bullets make it easier to see consistency in sentence structure.
• Bullets help break up long blocks of text by forcing line breaks.
• Bullets make documents easier to read by creating more white space.

Still not convinced? Look at the difference here:

No Bullets

Financial Group, USA
Senior Administrative Assistant, Date – Date

Coordinated all client meetings, developed a tracking system to ensure timely and appropriate scheduling, created meeting materials including spreadsheets and executive summaries, ensured successful follow-up on action items resulting from meetings. Managed daily workflow of partners, appropriately prioritizing tasks and obligations. Organized and performed office administrative tasks including all client correspondence, marketing, and general client service requests. Fulfilled clerical duties including answering the phone, filing, updating computer database, filling out paperwork, and writing letters.

With Bullets

Financial Group, USA
Senior Administrative Assistant, Date – Date

• Coordinated all client meetings and developed a tracking system to ensure timely and appropriate scheduling, created meeting materials including spreadsheets and executive summaries, ensured successful follow-up on action items resulting from meetings
• Managed daily workflow of partners, appropriately prioritizing tasks and obligations
• Organized and performed office administrative tasks including all client correspondence, marketing, and general client service requests
• Fulfilled clerical duties including answering the phone, filing, updating computer database, filling out paperwork, and writing letters

The information is EXACTLY the same. But which one is easier to read? Which one looks more organized? And which one makes you want to continue reading? Without bullets, you’ve just got a big block of text. It’s hard on the eyes and almost anyone who sees this will quickly lose focus and move on to the next resume in the pile. Lastly, remember to stick with the basic bullet point – a solid black circle. Don’t bother using something fancy or unique; many computers can’t read these anyway so they’re converted to the default or erased completely which can throw off the entire layout of the page. Plus, using anything other than a basic bullet takes away from the clean, crisp look of a bulleted list.