How to write CV bullet points that actually get you interviews

Most CVs describe what someone was responsible for. The CVs that get interviews describe what someone actually achieved. That difference, between duties and outcomes, is the single most impactful change you can make to your application.

The problem with duty-based bullets

A duty-based bullet point sounds like this: "Responsible for managing the social media accounts for the company." It tells a recruiter what your job was. It does not tell them anything about how well you did it, what impact it had or why they should care.

The recruiter reading your CV has likely seen dozens of applications for the same role. A duty-based bullet is forgettable because it could have been written by anyone who held that job title, at any company, at any level of performance.

The formula that works

Strong bullet points follow a simple structure: action verb + what you did + measurable result. Every element earns its place. The verb signals energy and ownership. The context grounds the achievement. The result proves it mattered.

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The formula: [Strong verb] + [what you did / how you did it] + [result or impact, ideally with a number]

Before and after: UK examples

These examples use realistic roles and figures for the UK job market.

Customer service

BeforeHandled customer complaints and resolved issues in a timely manner.

AfterResolved 95% of customer complaints on first contact, maintaining a 4.8 satisfaction score across 150+ monthly interactions in a busy contact centre environment.

Administration

BeforeResponsible for managing office supplies and scheduling meetings for the team.

After">Coordinated office operations for a 20-person team, renegotiating supplier contracts to reduce stationery costs by 22% and introducing a shared calendar system that cut scheduling conflicts by half.

Marketing

BeforeHelped grow the company's social media presence and increase engagement.

AfterGrew Instagram following from 4.2k to 18k in 9 months through a weekly content calendar and targeted paid promotion, increasing average post reach by 340%.

What if you do not have numbers?

Not every role produces easy metrics. That is fine. You can still write strong bullets by being specific about scope, context and method.

Instead of "Managed a project to improve the onboarding process," try "Led a cross-functional project to redesign the staff onboarding process, reducing time-to-productivity for new hires from 6 weeks to 3 weeks."

The number appeared once you thought about the actual outcome. If you are struggling to find a figure, ask yourself: how long did it take before, and how long did it take after? How many people were involved? How many customers, cases, or transactions? Often the number was always there.

Strong action verbs to start with

Avoid starting bullets with weak or passive phrases like "Helped with," "Assisted in" or "Was involved in." These shrink your role. Use verbs that position you as the person driving the work:

Led, directed, managed, oversaw (for leadership)
Built, created, developed, designed (for creation)
Reduced, cut, saved, eliminated (for efficiency)
Grew, increased, expanded, drove (for growth)
Launched, introduced, implemented, rolled out (for delivery)
Resolved, improved, fixed, streamlined (for problem-solving)

Why this matters for screening software too

Beyond impressing a human recruiter, strong bullet points are also more likely to contain the specific language that automated screening systems are looking for. A bullet that says "Implemented a Redis caching layer, reducing API response time by 62%" is more likely to match a job description asking for "performance optimisation" and "backend infrastructure" than a generic "helped improve system speed."

The same rewrite that impresses a recruiter also sends the right signals to the software reading your CV first. Strong bullets do double duty.