How to List Work Experience

Work experience is where hiring decisions actually get made. Everything above it gets you considered; everything in it gets you interviewed.

Aisha had strong roles but weak bullets. "Responsible for vendor relationships" told a parser she existed; it didn't tell a recruiter why she mattered. Reframing three bullets with verbs and numbers — contract savings, SLA improvements, team size — didn't change her job history. It changed how fast someone could understand it.

Entry format

• Job Title — Company Name, Location
• Month Year – Month Year (or Present)
• 3–6 bullet points per role (more for recent roles, fewer for older ones)

Bullet formula: Action + Task + Result

Start with a strong past-tense verb (Led, Built, Reduced, Increased, Launched). Describe what you did and quantify impact when possible.

• Weak: "Responsible for managing social media accounts"
• Strong: "Grew Instagram following from 2K to 45K in 8 months through daily content and influencer partnerships, driving 15% of new customer acquisitions"
• Weak: "Worked on backend services"
• Strong: "Designed REST APIs serving 2M daily requests; cut p95 latency from 800ms to 120ms by optimizing PostgreSQL queries and adding Redis cache"

Metrics recruiters trust

• Revenue: dollars saved or generated
• Scale: users, transactions, requests per day
• Efficiency: time saved, percent improvement, headcount managed
• Quality: error rate reduction, NPS increase, audit pass rate

Employment gaps

Brief gaps (3–6 months) need no explanation on the resume. Longer gaps: one honest line ("Independent study — AWS certification, 2023") or address in a cover letter. Never fabricate dates.

Multiple roles at one company

List each title separately with its own dates if promotions were significant. One block with sub-bullets per role works when space is tight.