Rewrite your CV bullets so each one shows what changed because of your work.
Wei Ling works in logistics, where she looks after deliveries, vendors, the warehouse and the reports that go with them. When she reread her CV, the three bullets under her current job were "Responsible for vendor management", "Prepared weekly reports for management" and "Trained new staff". She saw that they said very little about what she had actually done.
Bullets like "Responsible for vendor management", "Handled customer enquiries" or "In charge of monthly reports" are a job description. They tell a reader what the employer expected of whoever held the role. They don't say whether the person in it was good at it. A recruiter comparing you with, say, forty other candidates is trying to answer one question: what will change if they hire this person? Your CV bullets are the best place on the page to answer it.
A duty is what you were responsible for, and everyone in the role did it. A result is what happened because you did it. It shows that you noticed a problem, acted on it and made a measurable difference.
Most people write duties for two reasons. Job descriptions and appraisal forms are written that way, so it feels like the normal way to describe work. Results can also feel like bragging. A true result isn't bragging. It is evidence, and evidence is what a CV is for.
Start with the bullets under your current job. Mark any bullet that begins "Responsible for", "Handled" or "In charge of". These are the duty bullets you will rewrite.
You can rewrite each marked bullet in three parts: an action verb, what you did, and the result, with a number where you have one. Put the verb first, because it is what the reader's eye catches. Good verbs say what you did: built, cut, led, negotiated, launched, trained, fixed, redesigned.
Avoid soft openers such as "assisted with", "involved in" and "helped to", because they hide what your part was. If you genuinely assisted on something, say what you specifically did within that help. Keep each bullet to one line, two at most.
Wei Ling rewrote her vendor bullet. It now says she negotiated rates with three trucking vendors and moved two routes to a cheaper provider, reducing monthly delivery costs. She didn't know the exact saving, so she checked with her manager and added the real figure. Her reports bullet now says she built a late-deliveries dashboard in Excel, which management uses in the Monday operations meeting. Her training bullet now says she trained six new coordinators on the warehouse system and wrote the guide the team still uses. Each new bullet starts with a verb, says what she did, ends with an outcome and is short.
Numbers help because they are specific and easy to remember. A bullet saying you cut inventory report preparation time from two days to half a day tells the reader exactly what changed.
Many jobs don't produce clean figures, and that is acceptable. You can show a result in three other ways. The first is scale, meaning how big the job was: 40 outlets, three countries, a team of twelve, 2,000 SKUs. The second is the outcome in words. The third is what others did with your work, for example a process "adopted by two other teams".
Arjun, 32, is a secondary school teacher who is considering learning and development roles. He assumed teaching had no results he could write down. When he looked at his work again, he started with the bullet "Designed a revision programme for weaker students". He rewrote it to say he designed a six-week revision programme for 35 lower-secondary students, which two other teachers in the department later adopted. It has no percentage, but it shows the scale, his own initiative, and other people choosing to use his work.
Every number on your CV must be true and something you can explain. Don't invent figures. Don't round up, for example by turning 12 per cent into "nearly 20". Don't claim a team result as your own.
This rule is practical as well as honest, because interviewers ask about the numbers. A common follow-up question asks how you achieved a result you've stated. If the figure is real, that question gives you the chance to tell the story. If it is inflated, the question becomes a trap. An interviewer who senses one stretched number starts doubting the rest of your CV. Module 6 builds interview stories around these result bullets.
If you aren't sure of an exact figure, find it. Look in old emails, reports and appraisal notes, or ask someone, as Wei Ling asked her manager. If you still can't find it, describe the result without a number, using scale or the outcome in words. A true sentence without a figure is better than a precise figure you cannot defend.
Under each job, put the strongest and most relevant result first. A recruiter scanning the page may only read the first one or two bullets, as Lesson 3.1, "How your CV is read: software first, then a person", describes. Anything lower down may never be read.
Then check every bullet against these five points:
It starts with a strong verb. It says briefly what you did. It states what changed. It uses only numbers that are true and yours. It fits on one line, two at most.
Now take five bullets from your current CV and rewrite them this way. Pick the ones that feel most like duties, because they have the most to gain.
Take five bullets from your current CV and rewrite each as a result, starting with a verb and ending with the outcome.
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