I’ve said it many times before, but recruiters are busy people.
They’re talking to organisations about hiring needs, they’re sourcing candidates, they’re screening candidates, with the aim of getting to the negotiation stage and hiring a new person.
This busyness means that the time they spend reviewing a CV can be minimal.
Research in the recruitment industry states that on average recruiters spend between six and eight seconds looking at your CV before they decide whether you are suitable for their vacancy or not.
The trick therefore is to make life as easy for the recruiter as you can and bullet points are the way to go.
Paragraphs or bullet points
Which of the following gets across the candidates skills more quickly:
Option A
At Acme Inc I was a Product Manager, responsible for a financial services software as a service product, used by small businesses. This involved undertaking research with customers, translating requirements into user stories, managing the backlog and the product roadmap, and working with the development team to deliver each sprint. The product had ten thousand customers and a free-to-paid conversion rate of 5%, which I had increased over the course of twelve months. I also increased customer lifetime value and generated additional post-sign-up promotional sales.
Option B
Product Manager at a SaaS fintech business with 10k customers, responsible for:
Research with 10k customers via surveys and interviews
User story creation within Jira
Managing backlogs and roadmaps in Jira and ProductBoard
Key successes include:
Increased free-to-paid conversion from 4% to 5% within 6 months
Increased customer lifetime value from $2,000 to $2,500
Generated an additional $25k in post-sign up revenue
When they’re busy, people like to scan rather than read solid chunks of text, so to give yourself a greater opportunity of success, make it easy for the recruiter to find the information that’s going to get them excited.
Creating your bullet points
There are a few simple tricks to making a good bullet point:
Strong starting verb: as you can see above I’ve used increased and generated, both of which are positive doing words. Much better than helped or contributed
Quantify: again, with the above example I’ve quantified my achievements in the bullet points and I’ve not just increased conversion I’ve increased conversion from 4% to 5% within 6 months. Focus on the outcomes.
Be specific and concise: the more you can be specific the less thinking the recruiter has to do to determine what you mean. Just keep it short like the examples above.
As with anything you’re doing to try and get yourself a new role, wherever you can take the opportunity to tailor your CV or application to that specific employer. What is important for them and how can you demonstrate this to them?
Go and take a look at your CV or LinkedIn profile now and see how you can convert large paragraphs of text into shorter, focused bullet points and see what a difference it makes.
Getting Started in Product operates a bookstore that covers everything product and business-related, including recruitment advice such as Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology and Practice Psychometric Tests: How to Familiarise Yourself with Genuine Recruitment Tests and Get the Job you Want