In most cases, resume bullet points should not have periods, unless each bullet point is a complete sentence. The key is consistency: if you end one bullet point with a period, make sure all bullet points in that section (or ideally, your entire resume) follow the same rule.
Whether or not to use periods in your resume bullet points depends on how you write them. If your bullet points are fragments or phrases (which is most common in resumes), you should omit the periods. For example:
- Led a team of 5 marketing specialists to launch a new product
- Increased email open rates by 35% through A/B testing
Notice how these are not full sentences—they don’t need periods. Leaving them out keeps your resume clean, concise, and easy to scan, which recruiters prefer.
However, if your bullet points are full sentences, it’s acceptable to end them with periods. For example:
- I led a team of 5 marketing specialists to launch a new product.
- I increased email open rates by 35% through A/B testing.
That said, resumes are not essays. The majority of professional resume writers recommend using fragments without periods, since they focus attention on key achievements and actions rather than grammatical completeness.
What matters most is consistency. If you decide to include periods, use them everywhere. If you leave them out, make sure all bullet points follow that same format. A mix of both looks careless and unpolished.
Best practice: Skip periods unless every bullet point in your resume is a full sentence. Keeping bullet points as fragments without punctuation helps your resume look cleaner and makes it easier to read at a glance.
Michael Tomaszewski
Michael Tomaszewski, CPRW, is a resume and career advice expert with 7+ years of experience in the hiring industry. He has helped millions of readers and dozens of one-on-one clients create resumes and cover letters that *finally* do their talents and accomplishments justice.
