Before and After Rewrites

Diagnose, then rewrite

Most weak bullets have one of a few problems: they list duties instead of achievements, are vague about the work, hide your role behind "we", stack buzzwords without substance, or bury the point in a long sentence. To rewrite, ask: What exactly did I do? With what? Why did it matter and to whom? What evidence do I have? Then rebuild using the action + what + impact pattern. Keep the truth intact: a rewrite makes the same work clearer, it never makes it bigger than it was.

Four rewrites

Fictional work, honest framing.

Duty, not achievement
  Before: Responsible for maintaining the admin dashboard.
  After:  Fixed 30+ reported bugs in the Angular admin dashboard and added an
          error-reporting hook so issues reach the team with stack traces.

Vague
  Before: Worked on APIs.
  After:  Designed REST endpoints for order tracking in Node.js and documented
          them with OpenAPI, used by the mobile team for the tracking screen.

Hidden role
  Before: We built a recommendation feature.
  After:  Implemented the data pipeline for a team-built recommendation feature,
          writing the daily batch job in Python and its tests.

Buzzwords
  Before: Leveraged cutting-edge AI synergies to drive innovation.
  After:  Prototyped a ticket-tagging script using an LLM API; the support team
          trialled it for two weeks and kept it for triage suggestions.

Read it as the interviewer

For each bullet, write down the first follow-up question an interviewer might ask. If you cannot answer it well, rewrite or remove the bullet.

Quick check: What should a rewrite of a weak bullet never do?

• Name the technology used
• Start with an action verb
• Make the work sound bigger than it really was
• Clarify your personal role