But Do You Really Need One
Job applicants often wonder if theres any point writing a cover letter with no guarantee it will be read or influence hiring decisions. Not being required to include one with your resume is typically welcomed as a reason to skip it. This is understandable, but not advisable. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by regarding cover letters as essential, not just a smart idea. Studies have shown they can give you a 40% job-winning edge over other qualified applicants who do not submit one.
Why else?
Myth-busting research has concluded that the cover letter is not dead. The opposite is true. Not submitting a cover letter with your resume could actually jeopardize your job-winning chances. Why risk it?
Even with no requirement to include a cover letter with your resume, there is only reason not to do so if the application instructions stipulate that it be excluded.
According to one survey, 90 percent of hiring professionals consider a hiring manager invaluable when making hiring decisions. Even if cover letters are optional, about three-quarters of recruiters still expect to receive them, prefer to receive them, always read them and show a preference for applicants who include one.
HR professionals find cover letters important and useful to:
- Explain a job candidates motivation to join the company 63% of respondents
- Describe career objectives 50%
- Highlight professional achievements 47%
Should Resume Be In Past Or Present Tense
First of all, the usage of tenses in your should be characterized by consistency. An unreasonable mixture of tenses leads to a confused impression. Obviously, you need to know what tense to use on resume, past or present, and simply stick to it. However, in many cases, you will actually need to resort to a mixture of both. The secret of grammatical success lies in using them according to certain rules.
Lets imagine you have no current job. Should a resume be in past tense then? The answer is yes. So, do you use present tense on resume for a current job only? Not exactly. If you are currently engaged in volunteering or other extracurricular activities that are worth mentioning in your resume, you need to use present tense for them too.
Some candidates dont know whether to choose resume past tense or present and it might be tempted to go for the present participle verbs. It seems much easier to put managing the team of IT specialists in your current or past duties than to decide between manage or managed. However, using this trick lessens the power of your resume. Verbs used in the present or past tense give a sense of active involvement and achievement. The -ing form, on the contrary, leaves an impression of incompleteness.
Short And Sweet Looking As Good As It Sounds
Dont even think about tinkering with margins or font size as a way to squeeze in too many lines of space-busting cover letter text. If word bloat is the real problem, then further edits are the only slimming solution. But if your cover letter is well within the 400-word count limit, and seems to fit fine on a single page, it might still benefit from eye-pleasing improvements. Every aspect of the documents layout, design and formatting should help make it:
- Inviting to read at first glance neat, clean and streamlined, with ample white space.
- Easy to read all the way through reflecting suitable choices of fontsand sparing graphic touches.
How to prevent widows and orphans
Knowing how to manage straggler text snippets in your cover letter is useful to ensure the document fits on one page without compromising the layouts look.
Widows are paragraph-ending lines of text that stray onto the top of the next page, while orphan lines start a new paragraph at the bottom of a page. Neither is desirable in a multi-page document, but can be prevented with certain line or page break adjustments.Even within a single-page document,widow lines of text can cause problems with page fit and layout imbalance. One of the following solutions can make a difference:
- Break a long paragraph into two paragraphs
- Combine two short paragraphs into one
- Revise the wording to remove widow lines.
Also Check: When Will Disney Cruises Resume
What Tense To Use When Writing A Resume Ideas
What Tense To Use When Writing A Resume. A present tense resume is important if youre talking about the current ways that you are using your skills and experience in a job. A weaker form of writing on your cv is to use the present tense.
And if your resume is all tasks, well im willing to admit that present vs. Any activities related to industry associations you belong to.
Examples Of Previous Job Experience
- Handled the entire project successfully
- Managed multiple teams
Hiration Pro Tip: It is sometimes necessary for you to list a past achievement even while mentioning your current job responsibilities. In such a scenario, you can make a clear distinction between finished tasks and ongoing tasks and thereby keep both the past and present tenses separate.
Recommended Reading: Community Involvement Resume
When To Use Past Tense
Always use past tense when describing a previous position, activity or volunteer commitment. Past tense can also be used throughout a resume based on personal style preference. One exception is that past tense should not be used when describing current or future goals. Past tense is often used when listing job history. For example, you could describe your previous job experiences by writing that you directed phone calls and set appointments for top executives.
A Guide To Choosing The Right Resume Tense
When writing a resume, you want to make sure that it’s a flawless representation of your skills, expertise and current job history. Your resume should be well-organized, easy to read, professional and stand out to hiring managers. Using the proper resume tense or tenses is one detail that helps you make a good impression on hiring managers if done correctly.
In this article, we discuss the importance of using the correct resume tense, how to choose a resume tense and offer examples of both past tense and present verbs that you can use to write an effective and polished resume.
Also Check: Should I List Gpa On Resume
The Present Continuous In Resume Summary Statements
Your resumes summary statement is a section at the start of your resume with strong statements that summarize your qualifications, strengths and experience. Remember to keep your summary statement under four sentences. Too short and it looks unprofessional, too long and no one will finish reading it.
Putting the present continuous to use in a resume summary isnt hard. In fact, if you follow two simple rules, itll take five minutes.
For example, lets look at the resume of a student looking to find his first job.
I am currently studying English at Seoul National University and will be graduating in June. After, I am planning to work at an established textbook company for several years.
These two sentences are already most of a good summary. All resume summaries follow the same basic pattern:
It might only be two lines, but its most of a summary and its perfect for summary statements.
How To Write A Resume: Past Or Present Tense
When writing your resume, you may wonder whether you should use past or present tense. The resume tense you use depends on the type of resume you are writing and the accomplishments or responsibilities you are including in the document.
In this article, we explain when and how to use past tense or present tense and when it is appropriate to use both past and present tense in a certain section.
Read Also: How To Add Academic Projects In Resume
Best Practices For Choosing A Resume Verb Tense
When to use past tense on a resume:
Write your previous professional experiences in the past tense. Old jobs, past volunteer experiences, and details of your education should all be written using the past tense, as they well happened in the past!
Exampleof past tense on a resume:
You can also use past tenseon your resume to describe previous accomplishments in your bullet points. More on this later
When to use present tense on a resume:
Use the present tense to describe absolutely anything youre still doing at the time of writing your resume.
Write your current job, any ongoing activities, or your education in the present tense.
Heres an easy trick to remember this: If youve written Present instead of an end date for an experience, useyou guessed it! The present tense.
Remember the exception:
Theres one exception to the above rules on resume verb tense: while you should write your current job in the present tense, write specific accomplishments from it in the past tense.
Your summary paragraphs for current experiences should still be in the present tense, but your accomplished-focused, metrics-bound bullet points should be in the past tense if they already happened.
This rule makes sense the accomplishments youre listing for your current job have already happened in the past, thats why you can list them!
Heres an example:
When Should I Use Present Tense On My Cv
You should use action verbs in the simple present tense on your CV when youre writing bullet points for your current role that describe:
- Anything you do on a day-to-day basis
- General responsibilities that you hold in your current position
- Projects that are still ongoing
In other words, each bullet point for your current role should start in an action verb in the present tense, such as:
- Prepare financial reports
- Deliver presentations to executive leadership
- Devise and implement strategic initiatives
- Negotiate lease agreements
- Optimise business processes and procedures
As a result, readers will be able to skim and process the information more quickly and thats exactly what youre looking to accomplish.
Recommended Reading: How To Add References To Your Resume
When Should I Use Past Tense On My Resume
You should use action verbs in the simple past tense when youre writing bullet points for:
- Any of your previous positions
- Any projects or tasks in your current role that you already completed
Examples of bullet points written in the past tense include:
- Organized conference for 5,000 attendees
- Taught lectures to undergraduate students
- Evaluated employee performance
Use Present Tense Describing Current Work Responsibilities
Use the present tense to explain what you do currently. These include:
- Activities you do at your occupation
- Any tasks you engage in after your daily job routine
- Volunteering gigs you participate in often
- All other relevant tasks you are involved in.
Here, the verbs youll use are not modified in any way. Examples of such terms include conduct, run, implement, and so forth.
You May Like: How To Make A Resume On Google Docs
When To Use Present Tense On Your Resume
The career summary or profile summary of your resume should always be in the present tense. The skills you list in this prominent section of your resume are skills you do all the time. You can write your current position in present tense, too. This is the it-can-get-tricky part because you can also talk about your current position in the past tense — more on this in just a bit. Here are a couple of examples:
-
Direct full-cycle hiring processes, including telephone interviews, to ramp up department operations.
Train 6 associates and 2 clerks to ascertain the needs of clients and improve customer satisfaction.
Using Both Tenses In Your Resume
If therere activities in your present occupation that are terminated or if you just want to showcase the accomplishments you have attained, then you can use the present and past tense simultaneously under a single heading. Firstly, you will have to pen your present responsibilities in the present tense. After that, you can wind up on the section with the fished actions and achievements in the past tense.
Also Check: What To Put On A Resume With No Work Experience
Read Also: Is My Perfect Resume Legit
Write My Essay Online Free
Recommended pages
When You Can Mix Tenses
You should avoid mixing your verb tenses within the same resume entry or section whenever possible. The one exception is in the entry for your current job or any current volunteer work or activitiesif you want to highlight accomplishments that are fully completed and not ongoing.
When you have both past and present tense in the same entry, group the present-tense bullet points at the top of the entry and all of the past-tense bullet points at the end, Smith says. You might consider creating a Key Achievements or similar subsection under your current job and putting the past-tense bullets under that heading to make things even more clear for anyone reading your resume.
For example, a project manager might write this about their current job:
Project Manager | OrangeYellow Co | Cleveland, OH | August 2018Present
- Lead the delivery of initiatives using Agile/Scrum methodologies
- Define timelines, budgets, KPIs, and milestones for each initiative
- Coordinate a cross-functional team of 20+, delegating duties and allocating resources using Asana, Google Workspace, and Airtable
- Communicate with key stakeholders from conception through completion
Key Achievements
Still confused? Theres an easy fix: To keep things simple and ensure consistency, some people choose to keep every verb on their resume in the past tense, Smith says. So if youre not sure, sticking to the past tense is a safe bet.
You May Like: Acting Resumes For Beginners
Should My Resume Be In Past Or Present Tense
To impress the hiring manager when you’re applying for jobs, your resume should demonstrate your exceptional grammar skills. To accomplish this, you need to present your responsibilities for past and current roles using the correct tense. By following a few simple guidelines, you can easily select the right tense for each section of your resume.
In this article, we discuss the tense you should use for your current job, the different tenses you will use on your resume, and the rules to follow when choosing the correct tense to describe your responsibilities. We also offer extra tips, a resume template and examples.
Related:Resume Format Guide
The Present Perfect In Interviews
The present perfect can be used for anything, but in an interview its great for:
Since every question in an interview will be about you, eventually theyll start asking questions related to time. For example, take a look at the following:
Q: How long have you lived in the UK?
A: I have lived in the UK for 7 years.
Q: How long have you studied English?
A: I havestudied English for 10 years.
You can use the present perfect to talk about your skills and experience, just like in a resume or cover letter. But using it to talk about how long youve done something is much more advanced. Its a great sign that you really know your English!
Now were almost at the end and Ive saved the best for last.
You May Like: Microsoft Excel Resume Examples
Is It Better To Use Past Or Present Tense
There actually is an easy answer to this one resumes should be written in past tense. Why? The simple answer is, your resume should be about your accomplishments. In other words, you should be writing about things youve already achieved, which means using past tense.
The biggest mistake most people make on their resumes is listing job duties rather than accomplishments. Using present tense in your bullet points is usually a pretty good sign that youre focusing on your responsibilities, which isnt what hiring managers care about. To keep the focus where it belongs, think about what youve already had success with and write down what youve done not what youre currently doing or what you intend to do in the future.
When To Use Present And Past Tense In A Section Of Your Resume
Sometimes, it makes perfect sense to mix tenses. In the rare occasions where you still hold a position where you earned your greatest accomplishments, you can list your current duties along with any honors you received. This would make the most sense if you received a promotion.
This is what you should include in an entry that has both present and past tense:
- The name of the business you are working for.
- The name of the city where the business is located.
- Your position, plus the years you worked for in parentheses. Just like an entry that is entirely in the present tense, list the month and year you started and your finish date as Present.
Read Also: How To Build A Acting Resume With No Experience
What Is Past Tense
Past tense is used to describe an event or accomplishment which previously occurred.
It is used to describe an action which is completed, and which is no longer on-going.
When writing your resume, most of the bulleted points describing accomplishments and achievements will be written using a past tense verb.
In keeping these definitions extremely simple and easy to understand, weve listed a few examples below.
These examples are, of course, related to work accomplishments:
- Completed sitewide rewrite
- Sold over 10,000 units to direct clients via cold calling
- Project managed new web application from onset through completion