Most CVs get the tense question half right. The current job sits in the present, older jobs sit in the past, and then something slips: a role that ended last month still says "manage", one bullet in a list of five drifts into the past, and the profile paragraph opens with "I am" while every bullet below it drops the pronoun. Together, these slips make a CV read as if three people wrote it.
This guide is about a CV written in your own language. If you write in another language, the norms shift, and our guide to writing a CV in a second language covers those differences.
Present for the job you hold, past for everything else
The baseline rule is simple and widely accepted by recruiters in English-speaking markets. Your current role uses the present tense, because the work is still happening. Every previous role uses the simple past, because it is finished.
So a current line reads "Run weekly sprint planning for a team of nine." A previous role reads "Ran weekly sprint planning for a team of nine." Same fact, different time frame, and the reader instantly knows which job is live.
The trouble starts at the edges, where a job is neither cleanly current nor cleanly over.
The role you are leaving or just left
Picture Dana, an invented operations lead who resigned three weeks ago and is serving notice. Is her job current? It depends on the date column.
A practical way to decide:
- Still employed, even during notice: keep the present tense, and keep the end date as "Present". You are still doing the work, and switching to the past can make a recruiter assume a gap that does not exist.
- Contract or employment has ended: switch to the past, even if it ended last Friday. A line saying "Manage supplier contracts" next to an end date of September is a contradiction the reader will notice.
- Between the two, such as garden leave or an agreed exit date: check how your end date reads. If the dates say the role is over, the verbs should agree with them.
The usual mistake is updating the dates and forgetting the verbs. When you close a role on your CV, reread every bullet in it.
Mixed tenses inside one role
Inside your current job, some things are ongoing and some are done. You still manage the team, but the migration you led last spring is finished. Forcing everything into the present produces lines like "Migrate 40 client accounts to the new platform", which reads as if the migration never ends.
The cleanest approach is to let each bullet match the reality of what it describes:
- Ongoing duties and responsibilities use the present: "Lead a team of six analysts."
- Completed projects and one-off results use the past: "Migrated 40 client accounts to the new platform with no lost data."
Some editors push everything into the present for consistency. That breaks down once a bullet carries a finished result, because results are past events. "Cut onboarding time from three weeks to eight days" only makes sense in the past.
If mixing bothers you, order helps. Put the ongoing scope first, in the present, and the completed achievements after it, in the past. The reader moves from "what this person does" to "what this person has already delivered", and the shift in tense feels intentional rather than careless.
What to avoid is drift with no logic, where bullet two is present and bullet four is past for no reason. It usually comes from pasting lines from an older CV.
Why "was responsible for" hides what you did
"Was responsible for the quarterly budget" sounds formal and safe. It is also one of the weakest constructions you can put on a CV, and the tense is not the problem. The problem is that it describes a job description, not a person.
It tells the reader what you were supposed to do, not whether you did it or what changed because of you. Compare:
Was responsible for the quarterly budget of the marketing department.
Built the quarterly marketing budget and moved spend from print toward the two channels with the lowest cost per lead.
The second version has a subject doing something, a concrete action and a consequence. The first has a role hovering over a task.
The same goes for "duties included", "tasked with" and "involved in". Rewrite the line around what you did, starting with the verb. If you need help choosing the verb itself, our list of action verbs for a CV has plenty, sorted by the kind of work they describe.
One honest exception: if you genuinely held accountability without doing the hands-on work, say so plainly. "Accountable for a 2 million euro budget managed by three regional leads" is accurate and still active in shape. Just do not use "responsible for" as a default opener.
First person: the profile paragraph versus the bullets
Should a resume be in first person? The short answer for English CVs is: implied first person in the bullets, and a choice to make in the profile.
In bullets, drop the pronoun. "Led a team of six" is understood as "I led a team of six". Writing the "I" in every line only makes a scannable list repetitive. Third person ("Dana led a team of six") is worse, because it reads like someone else wrote your CV about you.
The profile paragraph at the top is different. It is a short piece of prose, and it can work in two ways:
- Pronoun-free: "Operations lead with eight years in logistics, focused on supplier performance and cost control."
- Light first person: "I run logistics operations for mid-sized retailers and I am happiest fixing supplier problems before they reach the customer."
Both are acceptable. The pronoun-free version is more traditional and more compact. The first-person version sounds warmer and suits creative or client-facing roles. What does not work is mixing them, such as starting with "I am" and then sliding into fragments, or using "I" in the profile and then "he" or "she" further down.
Pick one voice for the profile, keep the bullets pronoun-free, and you are consistent. That combination is also what most LinkedIn "About" sections already use, which is handy if you build your CV from your profile with a tool like Postulit: the About text often carries over as a first-person profile, and the experience lines need trimming into verb-led bullets.
A five-minute tense pass before you send
Once the content is done, run one pass that looks only at grammar, not substance:
- Read the verbs in your current role. Ongoing work in the present, finished results in the past.
- Read every previous role. Every verb should be in the past, with no leftovers from when that job was current.
- Check any role you have recently closed. Dates and verbs must agree.
- Search for "responsible for", "duties included" and "tasked with". Rewrite each one around an action.
- Read the profile aloud. One voice, start to finish.
This pass fits neatly into a wider review, and our CV proofreading checklist covers the rest. Do the tense pass first, while you are still looking at the verbs, and fix the job you most recently left before anything else.