# Resume tense checker

> Past tense for jobs you've left, present for the one you're in. Every opening verb checked, with the right form.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| What you bring | Your resume, with job titles and dates, or a list of bullet points |
| Price | Free |
| Rendered page | https://atsprep.com/tools/resume-tense-checker |
| This document | https://atsprep.com/tools/resume-tense-checker.md |

Check the verb tense of every resume bullet: past for jobs you've left, present for the one you're in. Each wrong opener comes with the right form.

## Past for jobs you've left, present for the one you're in.

- **Read from the dates:** A job dated to Present is your current one. A job with an end date reads in past tense.
- **The right form:** Each wrong opener comes back fixed, irregular verbs included: lead becomes led, run becomes ran.
- **Honest when it can't tell:** With no dates, it only checks that your lines agree, and tells you that's all it did.

## Questions

### Should my resume be in past or present tense?

Past tense for every job you've left: “Led”, “Built”, “Ran”. Present tense for the job you're in now, for what you still do: “Lead”, “Build”, “Run”. Your summary can be in present tense.

### Can I mix tenses in my current job?

Yes. In the job you're in, present tense fits what you still do and past tense fits what you finished, like a project that ended. What reads wrong is a present-tense verb in a job you've left.

### How does it know which job is current?

Only from the dates. A job dated “to Present” or “to Current” is your current one; a job with an end date has ended. If you paste bullets with no dates, it can't know, so it checks that your lines agree with each other and says so.

### Is it wrong to start a bullet with an -ing verb?

It reads like a job ad: “Managing the rota”. Open on the verb itself instead: “Managed the rota” for a job you've left, “Manage the rota” for the one you're in. The checker gives the right form for each.

### What about irregular verbs like lead and run?

The checker knows them: lead becomes led, run becomes ran, write becomes wrote, grow becomes grew. Verbs spelled the same in both tenses, like cut, set and read, are left alone.

### Is what I paste uploaded or saved?

No. The checker runs in your browser. Nothing you paste is sent to ATSPrep or anyone else, and it's gone when you leave the page.

Open the full resume Studio: https://atsprep.com/studio

## About ATSPrep

ATSPrep (https://atsprep.com) is a free resume and application workspace. Match experience to a posting, strengthen claims with evidence, and track the next action. Its PDF check shows text recovered by ATSPrep's extractor, not an employer's proprietary ATS or hiring decision.

- **Price:** Free plan forever: your ATS score, every fix, job match, 3 AI rewrites and PDF downloads, with no card or watermark. Optional ATSPrep Pro ($9 once for 7 days, $12/month, or $29 once for 3 months) adds 300 AI edits a day, Fix all with AI, AI tailoring, Word downloads, all 13 templates and unlimited practice with Pip.
- **Account:** none needed to import or edit a resume, or for its first check and 3 rechecks a day. A free sign-in is needed for PDF downloads (Word files come with ATSPrep Pro), to sync, and for more than 1 AI edit.
- **Your file:** parsed and exported inside the browser. The resume file itself is never uploaded.
- **Sent:** matching a job by meaning, on by default once you add a job (the lines involved). Only on a button press: AI edits (the lines involved), a job link (the link) and Pip voice calls (your speech). Never your contact details, and none of it is stored.
- **Connection:** some tools load on first use and need a connection to download. Local storage is not a cloud backup.
- **Accepts:** PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, or pasted plain text.

Start here: https://atsprep.com/studio