How to Write the Work Experience Section of Your Resume
How to write your resume's work experience so it shows results, not just duties, with a bullet formula and before and after examples.
Open your resume and read the Work Experience section again. If almost every line starts with responsible for or in charge of, you are describing duties from your old job description, which anyone else in the same role could write word for word. A recruiter reading dozens of resumes a day will not see what makes you different. This article helps you turn this section from a list of duties into evidence of results.
What work experience does on a resume
For anyone who has worked, this section is the heart of the resume. It has to answer two questions within seconds: have you done the kind of work this role needs, and how well? The first is answered with job titles and keywords that match the ad. The second is answered with results that happened because of you.
The basic structure of each job
- Job title, company name, start month and year to end month and year, newest job first
- One line of context (optional) if the company is not well known, for example: company selling medical equipment to private hospitals
- 3 to 6 bullets for the most recent job, fewer for older ones
If you were promoted within the same company, list both titles under one company, because a promotion is evidence of performance in itself.
The bullet formula: action plus what you did plus result
A good bullet says what you did, how, and what happened. Start with a strong verb such as designed, reduced, increased, launched, improved or negotiated, and end with the result.
Before and after examples
- Before: Responsible for the company Facebook page After: Planned monthly content and adjusted posting times based on Insights data, increasing chat enquiries from the page to the point the sales team added staff to answer them
- Before: Handled purchasing documents After: Created a new purchase request template and combined approval steps into one file, cutting approval time from several days to within one day for standard requests
- Before: Helped with recruitment After: Screened resumes and scheduled interviews for 4 departments, and built an interview summary form that department heads still use
If you have no numbers
Not every job has clear numbers. Use verifiable qualitative results instead, such as being asked to train new staff, a system you built being adopted by the whole department, or a client asking for you on next year's contract. Never make up numbers, because interviewers always ask where they came from. If you only remember a rough figure, describe it in words or as a range, and be ready to explain where it came from.
Duties show where you sat. Results show what you changed.
Tailor it to the job you apply for
You do not need to rewrite everything each time. Keep a bank of bullets for each job, then put the ones that match the ad first. Use the same words as the ad: if it says stakeholder management and you coordinated with several departments, use that term on the relevant line. This helps both ATS systems and human readers.
Common mistakes
- Copying the job description paragraph: the reader cannot tell what you did yourself
- Using we throughout: readers want your part, so state your role in team work clearly
- Older jobs longer than newer ones: the latest job should have the most detail
- Missing dates or dates that differ from LinkedIn: it looks less trustworthy for no reason
Fix it today
- Open your resume and underline every bullet starting with responsible for or in charge of
- For each one, ask: what happened as a result, who benefited, what changed?
- Rewrite it with the formula action plus what you did plus result
- Compare it with the job ad you are applying for and put the closest matches first
- Read every bullet aloud; if you could not answer follow-up questions about it in an interview, fix it or cut it
Want a second pair of eyes? Upload your file to Resume Lab, then read about quantifying achievements on your resume and action verbs that make a resume stronger to sharpen every bullet.