The day I stopped using bullet points on my resume

I switched to a narrative summary instead of listing skills and my interview calls tripled in about 3 weeks. Has anyone else tried ditching the standard format for something more story driven?

2 comments

2 Comments

baker.simon20d ago

Saw a career coach talk about this on LinkedIn a few months back and it makes total sense. Bullet points just turn into a boring list of keywords that everyone else has too. A narrative summary lets you actually explain how you solved a problem or grew a project from scratch. Recruiters are scanning for real results not just buzzwords like "team player" or "detail oriented." My buddy tried this with his IT resume and said the same thing happened to him - more callbacks and better conversations in interviews. Standard formats are too easy for them to glance over, but a short story about a win sticks in their head.

leo_lopez20d ago

Short story about a win sticks in their head" - I mean, does it though? Recruiters are looking at like 200 resumes a day. They're skimming for keywords half the time cause that's what the HR software filters for anyway. I tried the narrative thing a couple years back and honestly got crickets. Maybe it works for creative fields but in something like IT or finance, they just want to see your certs, your years of experience, and what tools you used. A paragraph about how you "saved the day" feels like a sales pitch when they just need to know if you know Python or not. Seems like this advice gets pushed by career coaches who make money off people constantly changing their resume.