How to write resume bullets with numbers: before and after

What is the formula for a strong bullet?

Verb, then task, then number, then result. 'Built a three statement model for a mid-cap retailer, used by the club's 12 person sector team to pitch a long that the fund bought' does all four. 'Responsible for financial analysis' does none of them.

The number does two jobs. It proves the work was real, and it gives the interviewer something to ask about. A bullet with a number starts a conversation; a bullet without one is skipped.

1. Start with a verb in the past tense: built, analyzed, modeled, presented, sourced, drafted, led, cut, raised, grew.
2. Name the specific thing: a DCF on a named company, a weekly sales report, a 20 page literature review.
3. Add the number that sizes it: how many, how much, how often, how fast, or by what percent.
4. End with what it was used for or what changed because of it.
5. Read it aloud. If a banker could not ask a follow-up question about it, rewrite it.

What do before and after rewrites look like?

Here are thirteen rewrites of the bullets students write most often. The numbers in the after versions are examples; use your own, and only ones you can defend in an interview. If you do not know the exact figure, a careful estimate you can explain is fine, such as 'about 40'.

• Investing club, before: 'Member of the investment club, researched stocks.' After: 'Pitched a long on a $3B regional bank to a 25 member club; built the DCF and comps; the club added a 5% position.'
• Investing club, before: 'Helped manage the club portfolio.' After: 'Monitored 6 consumer holdings in a $120K student-run fund; wrote weekly one page updates read by the portfolio committee.'
• Club treasurer, before: 'Treasurer, in charge of the budget.' After: 'Managed a $15K annual budget for a 60 member club; cut event costs 18% by rebidding two vendors.'
• Club leadership, before: 'Organized events for the finance society.' After: 'Organized 8 speaker events with alumni from 5 banks; grew average attendance from 20 to 55 students.'
• Restaurant server, before: 'Waited tables at a busy restaurant.' After: 'Served 30 to 40 tables a shift in a 120 seat restaurant; trained 4 new servers on the point of sale system.'
• Retail job, before: 'Worked as a sales associate.' After: 'Ran weekly inventory counts across 1,200 SKUs; flagged a shrink pattern that cut monthly losses by about $2K.'
• Campus tutor, before: 'Tutored students in economics.' After: 'Tutored 15 students a semester in intro micro and statistics; 12 raised their exam grade by at least one letter.'
• Research assistant, before: 'Research assistant for an economics professor.' After: 'Cleaned and merged 10 years of county-level labor data (40K rows) in Stata for a professor's working paper on minimum wage effects.'
• Research assistant, before: 'Did a literature review.' After: 'Summarized 35 papers on bank capital rules into a 12 page review used to frame the paper's second chapter.'
• Startup, before: 'Co-founded a startup selling phone cases.' After: 'Co-founded an online phone accessory store; reached $18K in sales in 9 months at a 32% gross margin with $1.5K in ad spend.'
• Startup, before: 'Did marketing for a campus startup.' After: 'Ran Instagram ads for a campus delivery app; tested 6 creatives and lowered cost per signup from $4.10 to $1.60.'
• Family business, before: 'Helped at my family's business.' After: 'Built an Excel cash flow forecast for a 14 employee family landscaping firm, used to time a $60K equipment loan.'
• Case competition, before: 'Participated in a case competition.' After: 'Placed 2nd of 24 teams in a campus consulting case; built the market sizing and presented the cost model to 3 judges.'

What if your job has no obvious numbers?

Every job has numbers; you just have not counted them. Count people (customers served, students tutored, members led), money (budget managed, sales, costs saved), volume (rows of data, pages written, companies screened), and time (hours saved, turnaround cut, shifts worked).

If you truly have no outcome, size the scope instead. 'Answered about 60 customer emails a day for an online retailer' is a real bullet even with no result attached, because it tells the reader how much you handled.

• People: served, trained, tutored, recruited, led.
• Money: budget, revenue, savings, funds raised, deal or company size.
• Volume: companies screened, rows cleaned, papers reviewed, pages drafted.
• Time: hours saved per week, days cut from a process, frequency of a report.
• Rank: place in a competition, out of how many.

Which words should a bullet never start with?

'Responsible for', 'helped with', 'assisted in', 'worked on', and 'participated in' all tell the reader you were near the work rather than doing it. They also waste the first three words, which are the only ones a skimmer reads. Start with what you did.

Drop 'I' and 'my'. Banking resumes are written without first person. Keep tense consistent inside a role: past tense for anything finished, present tense only for a role you still hold.

Which programs will read these bullets first?

The programs below are read from the firms' own careers sites. The ones that open earliest are the ones that will screen your bullets first, so rewrite before those dates, not after.

Questions students ask

How many bullets should each role have?

Two to four. Your most relevant role gets the most. A part-time job unrelated to finance can carry two strong ones.

Can I estimate a number if I do not know it exactly?

Yes, if the estimate is honest and you can explain how you got it. Write 'about' or round it. Never invent a figure; interviewers ask about bullets, and a number you cannot explain hurts more than no number.

Should every single bullet have a number?

Aim for every one. The resume review on Waddle Street weighs this check heavily because a bullet without a number reads as filler. If one bullet truly cannot have a number, make it the most specific bullet on the page instead.

Should bullets end with a period?

Either way works. What matters is that every bullet on the page does the same thing.

How long should a bullet be?

One or two lines. If a bullet runs onto a second line by a word or two, cut words until it fits on one, or extend it so the second line is at least half full.