How important are the bullet points of your resume?

I understand that recruiters require no grammar/editing/format mistakes on your resume, but will it count against you if few of the actual tasks you list that you have done on the bullet point entries under your internships are complex, beyond general accounting tasks? Will it hurt you if you didn't calculate complex projections or create models while other candidates listed that they did do these tasks while in their internships?

 

Depends on where you are in your career. If you're 40 years old with nothing of substance on your resume, then yeah, that's going to be a problem. If it's limited to internships while you're in college, I don't think people are expecting that you will have revolutionized the workplace in a ten week span.

 
crazi4ib:
I am still in college, at a semi-target with a decent GPA. It seems my question wasnt completely answered. Can anyone else give some input on this? Much appreciated

i had an alum who's been in finance for almost a decade now look over my resume, and he told me no one bothers with bullet points until they actually interview you. all they look at are 1. institution 2. gpa 3. titles of past experiences 4. interests

 
kidflash:
crazi4ib:
I am still in college, at a semi-target with a decent GPA. It seems my question wasnt completely answered. Can anyone else give some input on this? Much appreciated

i had an alum who's been in finance for almost a decade now look over my resume, and he told me no one bothers with bullet points until they actually interview you. all they look at are 1. institution 2. gpa 3. titles of past experiences 4. interests

I guess that's the quick n dirty way to screen out candidates during the initial resume screening?

 
Best Response
Bruce Wayne:
kidflash:
crazi4ib:
I am still in college, at a semi-target with a decent GPA. It seems my question wasnt completely answered. Can anyone else give some input on this? Much appreciated

i had an alum who's been in finance for almost a decade now look over my resume, and he told me no one bothers with bullet points until they actually interview you. all they look at are 1. institution 2. gpa 3. titles of past experiences 4. interests

I guess that's the quick n dirty way to screen out candidates during the initial resume screening?

ya. atleast for first rounds in banking, according to him.
 

You definitely want to start off with a strong task to keep the attention - if you start weak, the rest will often be glossed right over. Additionally, since many reviewers will read company and maybe 1 or 2 bullet points, you definitely want your first 1 to really pop. From there, depending on how many bullets you have for a particular experience, you want the first 1 or 2 to really pop, and the last 1 to send them off on a high note (although the 1st two should be best).

On a related note, I am talking about bullet point that show all qualities such as analytical involvement, leadership, results, etc, vs those that are solid points, but don't have every quality. There should be no really weak bullet points in your resume - if they are weak to the point of being filler, just remove them. In other words, if 4 bullet points for a particular experience on your resume, and 1 of them is something completely generic to every analyst, and doesn't show me any valuable quality of your candidacy, then you should only have 3 bullet points. Ex. if you performed research on companies, but don't have anything at all to show for it, then "Performed company research" or something similar doesn't need to be on your resume. If you can show some results, where the research you performed helped zero in on 4 potential deal partners for a live transaction, and one of them came through or something like that, that's a stronger story

 

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