Stop listing tasks. Write outcomes instead.

6 April 2026

The first draft of my work history had five bullets per role. It listed everything I did. It was accurate. It was also, as someone put it, "a machine gun."

The problem with task lists is that they answer the wrong question. "What did you do?" is easy to answer. "What actually changed because you were there?" — that's harder. That's also the question anyone hiring at the director level is actually asking.

The reframe

Every role has a story. Something was broken or limited, you saw it, you fixed it or built it. That's the arc. The bullet should be the arc, not the task list.

Before:

• Managed a team of digital advertising specialists
• Oversaw campaign performance and client reporting
• Participated in service redesign project

After:

• Started leading one consulting team. Scope grew to 25 people across five — advertising, SEO, copywriting, and web production.
• Co-led a full service and pricing redesign after an agency acquisition. Client churn fell roughly 25% within six months.

The second version tells you what changed. It has a number. You can infer the scale of the job from it without being told.

Lead with the ceiling

The first thing I wrote for my most recent role was the scope: P&L owner of a ~€2M portfolio. That's the ceiling. Everything after it is evidence that I operated at that level. If you start with tasks, the reader has to guess the scope. Don't make them work for it.

The "so what" test

For every bullet, ask: so what? If you can remove the second half of a sentence and still have the same bullet, cut it. "Managed campaign budgets" — so what? Add the result and suddenly it means something.

On the "beef"

Strip everything away. What actually happened? What number moved? Who was affected? That's the beef. Keep that. Cut the rest.

Two or three bullets per role. Lead with scope. Close with a result. That's the whole framework.