With LinkedIn being the de facto professional social media platform, optimizing your profile to stand out is crucial. One way many LinkedIn users try to improve their profiles is through the use of bullet points. But should you use bullet points on LinkedIn? There are pros and cons to consider.
On the one hand, bullet points can help present information in a scannable and organized way, allowing readers to quickly grasp the key points of your experience and background. This is especially important given recruiters and hiring managers often spend just seconds glancing at a profile before deciding whether to explore further. Bullet points can also help break up large blocks of text, making your profile more visually appealing.
However, overusing bullet points or using them improperly can work against you. Bullet points may give the impression you lack written communication skills or cannot present information in a narrative format. Irrelevant or excessive bullet points will clutter your profile rather than highlight important details. Additionally, bullet points can disrupt the flow of text, making your profile choppy and hard to follow if used pervasively.
When to Use Bullet Points on Your LinkedIn Profile
Used judiciously, bullet points can be an effective way to organize key information in your LinkedIn profile. Here are some of the best uses of bullet points on LinkedIn:
- Highlighting core skills in the skills section
- Summarizing key responsibilities and achievements under each position in your experience section
- Listing noteworthy projects you’ve worked on
- Organizing academic credentials and certifications in the education section
- Presenting volunteer work and community activities
- Pulling out important points you want to emphasize from longer paragraphs of text
In these situations, bullet points allow you to zero in on the most relevant details readers want to see. Used sparingly between paragraphs of text, they also create visual space making your profile less intimidating to read through.
When to Avoid Bullet Points on LinkedIn
While bullet points have their place, there are also many instances where you should avoid their use on a LinkedIn profile:
- In your profile summary – This overview of your background is best presented in paragraph format. Bullet points make it too disjointed.
- To describe detailed work accomplishments – Use bullets for quick highlights, but describe your achievements in full sentences to provide context.
- Listing every job duty – Focus on the most important responsibilities and accomplishments rather than every single task.
- Overusing bullets under each position – One or two bullet points to call out key achievements is plenty. Avoid long lists of bullets.
- For skills unrelated to the job – Only highlight relevant, in-demand hard and soft skills.
- In place of complete sentences in long sections of text – Avoid over-relying on bullets in any given section.
Excessive use of bullet points in these areas detracts from showcasing your full skills and qualifications in a professional narrative format.
Tips for Using Bullet Points Effectively
To leverage bullet points successfully on your LinkedIn profile, keep these tips in mind:
- Be selective – Only use bullet points when they serve a clear purpose, not just for the sake of bulleting information.
- Be consistent – Use the same format and punctuation for all bullets within a section.
- Be concise – Bulleted content should be short phrases or fragments rather than full sentences.
- Be specific – Vague bullet points like “team player” or “detail-oriented” take up valuable space. Quantify achievements instead.
- Be strategic – Place bullets purposefully between paragraphs of text for visual breathing room.
- Be clean – Avoid overcrowded sections with too many bullets. Adjust font sizes if needed to fit content.
- Be engaging – Use bullets to call attention to accomplishments and skills you most want to highlight.
With an intentional and minimalist approach, bullet points can be used tactically to enhance your LinkedIn presence and keep readers interested. But rely on them too much, and they quickly lose their impact.
Formatting Bullet Points on LinkedIn
To ensure your bullet points look clean and consistent, follow these formatting best practices:
- Place each bullet on its own line, with blank lines before and after bullet point lists.
- Use the default LinkedIn bullet style. Don’t replace with other symbols like dashes or arrows.
- Capitalize the first letter of each bullet point even if it’s a fragment. End each with proper punctuation.
- Align all bullet points to the left margin so they follow the natural reading flow.
- Adjust line spacing between bullets and text size as needed so points fit neatly on the page.
- Use about 2-5 bullets per section. More than that risks cluttering your profile.
Proofread bullet points carefully for odd formatting issues that can happen when copy-pasting text. Following standard bullet point best practices enhances readability and keeps your profile looking polished.
Examples of Effective Bullet Point Use on LinkedIn
To see bullet points used effectively, here are two examples from hypothetical LinkedIn profiles:
Experience Section
Digital Marketing Manager, Acme Agency – June 2020 – Present
- Increased lead generation by 65% over 6 months through targeted content marketing initiatives across company blog, social media, and email campaigns.
- Developed and executed social media strategy expanding Instagram following from 5,000 to 35,000 users in first year.
- Managed team of 5 associate-level content creators and guided them on best practices for engaging various target buyer personas.
In this example, the three bullet points spotlight the Digital Marketing Manager’s most noteworthy achievements in that role by quantifying results. They add important context that paragraphs alone could not efficiently convey.
Skills Section
- Content Marketing
- SEO/SEM
- Social Media Strategy
- Email Marketing
- Marketing Automation
- Google Analytics
- Adobe Creative Suite
- MS Office
- HTML/CSS
Here, restricting the Skills section to concise bullet points allows the profile owner to pack in a lot of relevant expertise that resume readers want to see upfront. Paragraphs would fail to scan as cleanly.
While these examples only scratch the surface, they illustrate some of the most strategic and effective applications of bullet points on a strong LinkedIn profile.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the selective use of bullet points can help enhance your LinkedIn presence and keep readers engaged. Stick to these core best practices when deciding where and how to implement bullet points:
- Use bullets to organize and draw attention to important information – but don’t overdo it.
- Avoid excessive bullets that clutter or disrupt the narrative flow.
- Be consistent with formatting and concise with content.
- Place bullet points strategically between paragraphs of text.
With the right balance of bullets and prose, you can create a LinkedIn profile that effectively showcases your qualifications while remaining professional and reader friendly.