If you’re ready to apply, follow these four tips when editing your resume to avoid common pitfalls and to ensure your document is polished and consistent from start to finish.
Provided by U of A Student Engagement & Career Development
Resume Update Best Practices – Video Transcript
Complete Document Refresh
When you’re updating your resume, here’s one thing that you should do: each time you update your resume, edit the whole document. Sometimes you’ll have pieces of your resume that you might have written two years ago and it’ll sound different—you have a different vocabulary or different ways of describing things. So each time you edit, edit each experience and give it a whole refresh.
Maintain Consistent Verb Tenses
Each time you edit your resume, pay attention to verb tenses:
- Current activities: Use present tense for something you’re currently doing
- Past experiences: Use past tense for previous work experience or club involvement
Format Consistency Check
Also pay attention to format. I’ve seen documents where I can tell something was written in one style at one time and then a different style—or even copy and pasted—and they’re actually different font sizes with different spacing throughout. These are details you want to uncover yourself so an employer doesn’t see it.
Focus on Recent and Relevant Content
As you’re updating your resume, one final thing to look at is: look at your resume for what is recent and relevant. You want your resume to be most relevant to the job description or the industry that you’re applying to work within.
This means you might be able to cut things that are from a couple years ago or that don’t apply any longer. A resume doesn’t have to function like a background check where it has every detail of everything you’ve done—it should really focus on the job description or the industry and what is recent and relevant to that.
Key Takeaways
- Edit the entire document every time you update
- Check verb tenses for consistency
- Maintain formatting consistency throughout
- Focus on recent and relevant experiences for your target role
