Writing experience in terms of results
Step 1 / 4·The three-part formula
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Learning objectives — after this module you will:
- Write bullets as action – context – result
- Find numbers even when the job has no clear KPIs
- Write the experience section as a graduate or a career changer
The three-part formula
Get a template for every bullet.
Every bullet in your experience section should answer three questions: WHAT YOU DID, IN WHAT CONTEXT, and WITH WHAT RESULT. Missing the third is the most common failure — and it's the only part that separates you from everyone else with the same title.
Same job, two ways of writing it
Describing duties
“• Responsible for recruitment across departments. • Involved in building the onboarding process. • Supported the delivery of internal training.”
All three are true of almost anyone who has worked in HR. Nothing tells the reader the scale you worked at, how well you did it, or what changed.
Describing results
“• Hired for 45 roles across 6 departments in 2025, cutting average time-to-hire from 42 to 28 days. • Built a new onboarding process for 120 joiners; first-90-day attrition fell from 18% to 9%. • Ran 14 internal courses with an average satisfaction of 4.6/5 across 380 attendances.”
Same job, but the reader immediately sees scale, competence and impact. These are the lines that make a recruiter stop.
Choose your opening verbs carefully
- USE ACTIVE VERBS for what you actually did: built, rolled out, cut, negotiated, standardised, recovered.
- AVOID VAGUE PHRASES: 'responsible for', 'involved in', 'supported', 'handled various tasks' — they don't say what you did.
- BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR ROLE: if you were part of a team, name your part ('owned the data workstream in a 5-person project') rather than claiming the whole project.
- 3–5 BULLETS PER JOB, with your strongest bullet first.
Key takeaway: Every bullet: action verb + specific work with scale + measurable result.