Use present tense for work you still do and past tense for work you have finished. Previous jobs normally use past tense. Your current job can use both: present tense for ongoing responsibilities, past tense for completed projects and results.
That distinction is more useful than changing every bullet under your current employer to present tense. Choose the tense for the action you are describing.
Resume tense at a glance
| What you are describing | Tense | Fictional example |
|---|---|---|
| An ongoing responsibility in your current job | Present | Manage the weekly rota for a team of eight. |
| A completed achievement in your current job | Past | Introduced a rota template that reduced scheduling errors. |
| Work at a previous employer | Past | Managed customer enquiries and trained two new colleagues. |
| Current volunteering or an ongoing project | Present | Coordinate monthly deliveries for a community food bank. |
| A finished internship, placement or project | Past | Built a booking prototype and presented the findings. |
All examples on this page are invented illustrations. Replace the details with your own work and verified outcomes.
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Present tense resume examples: your current job
Use the base form of an action verb: manage, lead, write, support or analyse. You normally omit “I” from a resume bullet, so write “Manage a team”, rather than “Manages a team”.
Customer Support Adviser | Example Company | April 2024–Present
- Handle customer enquiries by phone and email, escalating account issues when needed.
- Maintain the team's troubleshooting notes after product updates.
- Coordinate weekly feedback with the product team.
These bullets describe recurring work. Add scale or results where they are relevant and accurate; do not add numbers simply to make the sentence look impressive.
Past tense resume examples: previous jobs
For a job you have left, use past tense even if that employer still runs the process you created.
Operations Assistant | Example Company | June 2021–March 2024
- Prepared weekly stock reports for three branches.
- Reconciled delivery records and investigated missing items.
- Created a handover checklist used by the evening team.
The same rule applies to completed projects in education or volunteering. If you are writing your first resume, see our first-job resume examples for ways to describe evidence without inventing paid experience.
Can you mix past and present tense in one job?
Yes, when the bullets describe different timeframes. This is accurate rather than inconsistent:
Team Leader | Example Company | January 2023–Present
- Lead a team of six advisers handling customer enquiries.
- Review weekly quality checks and coach colleagues on recurring issues.
- Introduced a shared response library in 2025, reducing duplicate drafting work.
- Delivered the team's migration to a new ticketing system in June 2026.
The first two duties continue. The last two projects are complete. Do not change “Delivered” to “Deliver” unless you are describing something you still deliver regularly.
Within a single bullet, keep the timeframe clear. “Managed the launch and trains the team” leaves the reader guessing. Split it into “Managed the launch in June” and “Train new colleagues on the system” if one action has finished and the other continues.
Common resume verbs: present and past
| Present | Past | Usage note |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Led | “Led the project”, not “lead the project”, for a completed action. |
| Oversee | Oversaw | The past tense of oversee is oversaw; overseen needs a helper such as “have”. |
| Manage | Managed | Use managed for former roles or completed management work. |
| Build | Built | “Built a reporting tool” for a finished project. |
| Write | Wrote | “Wrote the guide”, not “written the guide”, as a standalone bullet. |
| Run | Ran | “Ran a workshop” for an event that has finished. |
| Drive | Drove | Prefer a specific action if “drove growth” obscures your contribution. |
| Develop | Developed | Explain what you developed and who used it. |
| Support | Supported | Name the team, task or outcome you supported. |
| Analyse / Analyze | Analysed / Analyzed | Choose UK or US spelling consistently. |
Should a resume say manage, managing or managed?
“Manage” describes an ongoing duty. “Managed” describes a completed action. “Managing” can work in a sentence, but standalone bullets usually read more directly when they begin with an action verb.
- Less direct: “Responsible for managing monthly reports.”
- Ongoing work: “Prepare monthly reports for the finance team.”
- Completed work: “Prepared the year-end report for the finance team.”
A word ending in “-ing” is not automatically wrong. The aim is clear meaning, not a blanket ban on a grammatical form.
What tense belongs in a resume summary?
Describe your current professional identity and skills in the present: “Operations manager with experience in multi-site delivery.” Use past tense for a particular completed achievement: “Led the opening of two sites.”
For senior roles, our executive resume summary examples show how to combine scope with evidence. Do not describe a former title as your current role if that would misrepresent your position.
Education and certifications often need no action verb: “BSc Computer Science, 2024” is clear. Mark an unfinished qualification with its expected completion date rather than presenting it as awarded.
A five-minute tense check
- Read the dates beside each role. Mark whether it is current or finished.
- Read each bullet separately. Does the action continue, or is it complete?
- Use present tense for ongoing actions and past tense for finished actions.
- Check irregular verbs such as led, oversaw, built and wrote.
- Read the exported file once more for mixed timeframes or accidental edits.
Correct tense helps readers understand your experience; it does not guarantee an ATS result or an interview. Keep the wider document clear with our ATS-friendly resume tips, then use the CV builder if you want to organise and export your own experience.