CV Once

How to write the work experience section of your CV

A repeatable format for every role: a clear header line, a one-line context, and three to six bullets that show results.

For most jobs, the experience section carries the most weight. A recruiter wants to answer three questions quickly: what did you do, how big was it, and was it any good. A consistent structure for each role lets them answer those questions in seconds.

The structure of one role

Every entry has the same four parts:

  1. Job title, as it was, or with a plain-English clarification if your employer used an internal title nobody outside understands.
  2. Employer and location: company name, city and country if relevant.
  3. Dates: month and year, in one consistent format.
  4. Bullets: what you achieved, most important first.

Optionally, a one-line context under the header tells the reader what the organisation or team was, when it is not obvious:

Tip: “Regional logistics firm, 300 staff, 40 vehicles; reported to the operations director.” One line like this makes every bullet below it easier to judge.

A complete example:

Operations Coordinator, Haddleton Freight, Bristol, UK March 2021 to present Regional logistics firm with 300 staff; reported to the operations director.

  • Cut late deliveries from 9% to 3% in eight months by rebuilding route plans around depot loading times.
  • Introduced a shared booking calendar that removed around 15 hours of weekly phone and email coordination.
  • Trained 11 new dispatch staff using a two-week shadowing plan, since adopted as the standard onboarding.

The numbers here are examples. Use yours, and only ones you can explain in an interview.

How many bullets per role

  • Current or most recent role: four to six bullets.
  • Previous roles in the last ten years: three to five.
  • Older roles: one or two bullets, or just the header line.
  • Short or unrelated jobs: the header line alone, or group them (see below).

Bullets should get shorter and fewer as you go back in time. If an old role has more bullets than your current one, your CV is telling the wrong story.

Write results, not duties

Your job description lists duties. Your CV should show what happened because you were there. A useful test: could anyone who held the job title write this bullet? If yes, rewrite it.

Before: Responsible for managing the company’s supplier relationships.

After: Renegotiated contracts with the five largest suppliers, saving £84,000 a year without changing service levels.

Before: Helped with the migration of customer records to a new CRM.

After: Cleaned and mapped 48,000 customer records for the CRM migration; finished two weeks early with no lost data.

Before: Worked on improving the onboarding process for new users.

After: Redesigned the first-week onboarding emails, raising the share of new users who completed setup from 41% to 58%.

The pattern: start with a strong verb, say what you did, give a result, add a number if there is one. The builder flags weak openings such as “responsible for”, “helped with” and “worked on”, achievement bullets with no number, and bullets over about 30 words. For more, see achievement bullets and quantifying achievements.

When you have no numbers

Not every result is a percentage. Use scale, frequency, scope or recognition instead:

  • Scale: “for 1,200 staff”, “across 14 sites”, “a £2m budget”
  • Frequency: “every month”, “38 audits a year”
  • Scope: “the first”, “the only”, “company-wide”
  • Recognition: “adopted as the standard template”, “shortlisted for the internal innovation award”
  • Before/after state: “replaced a manual weekly spreadsheet with an automated daily report”

Dates

Use month and year for every role (“Mar 2021 to Jun 2024” or “03/2021 to 06/2024”), and keep the format the same throughout. Years alone can look as if you are hiding short gaps, and recruiters often notice. For a current role, write “present”. The builder checks for inconsistent date formats and end dates before start dates, and gently flags gaps over six months so you can decide whether to explain them. See dates on a CV and career gaps.

Several roles at one employer

Show the employer once and list the roles beneath it, each with its own dates. This makes promotion obvious:

Fennick Housing Association, Leeds, UK

Team Leader, Tenancy Services, Jan 2022 to present - …

Tenancy Officer, Sep 2019 to Dec 2021 - …

Older and less relevant roles

If you have a long career, you do not need full entries for everything. Two options:

  • Condense: keep the title, employer and dates, drop the bullets.
  • Group: one entry called “Earlier experience” listing titles and employers, with or without dates.

After: Earlier experience: Sales Assistant, Quillmere Books; Customer Adviser, Tallowbrook Energy (2009 to 2013).

See long career CVs.

Contract, freelance and temporary work

Group short contracts under one heading such as “Freelance UX designer, 2020 to 2023”, then list the most relevant clients or projects as bullets. Agency temps can be shown under the agency with the client named in the bullet. See freelance and contractor CVs.

Tense, voice and punctuation

  • Current role in present tense (“Manage”, “Lead”); past roles in past tense (“Managed”, “Led”). Completed achievements in a current role can be past tense.
  • No “I”, “me” or “my”. The builder flags first-person pronouns. See tense and pronouns.
  • Either end every bullet with a full stop or none. The builder flags inconsistent ones.

Tailoring

Before each application, reorder bullets so the ones closest to the job ad come first, and check you have used the ad’s terms for the same skills (for example “stakeholder management” if that is what the ad says, rather than “working with partners”). See tailoring your CV.

Next: achievement bullets and the education section.