3 key takeaways
- Learn how to revamp and edit your resume.
- Revamping your resume could lead to more interviews and offers.
- For help revamping your resume, try Teal’s AI Resume Builder.
Do you ever feel like your resume is getting lost in the black hole of online applications? A strong resume revamp can make all the difference in getting more interviews and job offers in your next job search.
A well-structured resume makes it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to understand your skills and experience quickly and creates a professional first impression. In this guide, you'll learn how to revamp your resume in five simple steps.
What is a cv or resume revamp?
A CV or resume revamp means renovating or updating your CV/resume to better reflect your current skills, accomplishments, and target roles; it includes changes to content, format, and keywords for ATS and recruiter clarity. Revamping your resume entails tightening your content, cleaning up formatting, making it ATS-readable, and tailoring it to the jobs you actually want.
When to revamp your resume
Your resume is a living document that should evolve alongside your career. It deserves a refresh at least once per year, or sooner if you've experienced a significant shift in focus, responsibilities, or industry. Updating your resume means it will more accurately reflect your current qualifications and future career goals.
Here are some common signs your resume is outdated and needs a revamp:
- Outdated information: Does your resume still list your college internship (when you’re 15 years into your career) or a job you left years ago? Consider removing past roles that aren’t directly related to your current goals.
- Missing skills: Have you mastered new skills since last writing your resume? If your skillset has significantly expanded, your resume needs to as well.
- Career change: Have you transitioned to a new industry or do you want to? Tailor your resume to align with the specific skills and experience valued in your target industry or role.
- Generic content: Do your bullet points feel too weak or like they’re rehashing the job description? Consider updating your resume with strong action verbs and concrete results.
- Formatting issues: Does your resume have photos, graphics, or fancy fonts? While it may make sense to have an aesthetic document to send directly to hiring managers in a creative industry, in most cases, you want a clean, ATS-friendly resume for job applications.
If you're not sure when to revamp your resume, this guide on how to update a resume can provide some insights.
How to revamp your resume
Whether you're considering a career change, looking for a new role within your field, or simply haven't updated your resume recently, chances are it might be time for a revamp.
1. Review and analyze your current resume
Before you start revamping your resume, remember it’s a good idea to do a self-review to figure out what parts of your existing one work well (or not) and determine what to focus on the most. You can also consider getting your resume reviewed by a professional.
With Teal’s Resume Checker, you’ll get an instant score based on resume structure, measurable results, and keyword usage. Plus you’ll see a detailed breakdown of potential issues with your resume so you know exactly what to fix.
2. Update your resume sections
With a clear understanding of your resume's strengths and weaknesses, it's time to update the content section by section:
Professional summary
How you update your professional summary will depend on what your career goals. If you’re looking to get a higher-paying job in your field, focus on showing your technical and leadership experience along with professional achievements you can directly tie to business results. If you’re making a career pivot, adapt the language to highlight your transferable skills.
Work experience
Prioritize your most recent and relevant experience first, tailoring descriptions to highlight skills and accomplishments directly related to the job you're targeting.
Skills
Analyze the job description and identify the skills most relevant to the desired position (Teal’s Matching Mode can help with this!). Be sure to include a mix of hard skills and soft skills.
Education and certifications
If it’s been a while since you graduated, consider removing your graduation year. Add any new degrees or certifications.
Use metrics and action verbs
Don’t just list your title and general responsibilities from a job description—focus on the impact and results you uniquely created in your previous roles.
If you’re not sure what verbs to use for your bullet points, check out this list of the best action verbs for your resume.
Teal’s AI Bullet Point Generator is an easy way to rewrite your resume bullet points with an effective formula. When you add a new bullet to your Work Experience section in Teal, you can either write it with AI or input more details to generate a powerful bullet point.
What to remove / condense
- Outdated roles older than 10–15 years unless still relevant
- Personal photos or nonessential demographic details
- Graduation years if not needed for current level or region
- Vague buzzwords; replace with concrete outcomes
- Duplicate or redundant content across sections
Once the definition and structure are clear, the real leverage comes from cutting dead weight and sharpening what stays.
Practical before & after examples for bullets and experience entries
Work experience
Before: Led a student leadership committee to increase participation
After: Led a 5-person student leadership team to boost chapter participation from 50 to 100 (100% increase) in 6 months by launching a weekly onboarding and outreach program
Rationale: Adds scope, timeframe, and measurable impact.
Before: Assisted with customer support tickets
After: Resolved 30 to 40 customer tickets per day while maintaining a 95% CSAT and reducing average response time by 18% over 1 quarter
Rationale: Turns a generic task into performance, volume, and outcomes.
Before: Worked on a cross-functional project
After: Partnered with product, design, and engineering to launch a new onboarding flow that increased activation by 12% and cut drop-off by 9% in 8 weeks
Rationale: Names stakeholders, clarifies deliverable, shows results.
An example of using metrics and action verbs
Before: Managed events for campus club
After: Planned and executed 4 campus events, increasing attendee engagement by 40% and driving $12k in sponsorships in one semester
Rationale: Replaces “managed” with actions, results, and a timeframe.
3. Optimize your resume format and design
Clean, professional resumes helps you make a strong first impression on employers. Your resume will be more readable for both human reviewers and applicant tracking systems with a clean layout with clear headings, bullet points, and consistent formatting.
Oftentimes, you won’t get the chance to meet with the recruiter unless your resume at least passes the first stage of review in the job application process.
Teal’s Resume Builder Design Mode can assist with formatting. In this section of the Resume Builder, you get to choose from a variety of resume templates, change the styling options and layout, reorder sections, or change detailed settings, like line height and borders.
However you style your resume, you can feel confident knowing all of our resume templates are ATS-friendly.
ATS-safe formatting checklist
- Use standard headings (Work Experience, Education, Skills, Summary)
- Favor simple fonts; 1–1.5 line spacing; single-column layout
- Avoid tables or text boxes for key data; save as .docx or PDF per posting
- Include keywords in the Summary, Skills, and early bullets
- List software/tools as plain text (e.g., Salesforce, Python, Tableau)
Example of a dated entry updated for ATS
Dated entry (Before): Marketing Associate, ABC Corp, 2018-2021
- Managed email campaigns
- Helped improve website traffic
After: Marketing Associate, ABC Corp - June 2018 to May 2021
- Developed email campaigns increasing open rate from 12% to 22% and generating $120k in pipeline
- Optimized site content/SEO, boosting organic sessions 25% YoY
- Led cross-functional launches for 3 product campaigns on time
Rationale: Uses full dates, metrics, action verbs, and searchable keywords.
Once you've optimized your CV to pass ATS scans, you're ready to review it, read it out loud, and apply finishing touches.
4. Proofread and edit your resume
Proofreading is the final polish on your resume to make it shine and create a strong first impression.
To proofread your resume effectively, you can start with a free grammar and spell-checking tool to catch simple mistakes. Also, be sure to read through a few times (perhaps out loud) to see how it flows. If time permits, take a break from your resume and come back to it later with fresh eyes to see if you want to make any additional changes.
5. Get feedback and make necessary adjustments
After revamping your resume, it’s a good idea to get feedback from a third party to make sure you’ve hit the mark before sending it to an employer. You can ask a trusted friend or colleague, hire a resume reviewer, or use an online resume review tool.
For suggestions you can implement right away, Teal's Resume Analysis feature gives you instant feedback on a variety of areas and helps you make improvements to your resume.
6. Tailor to each job description
Tailoring your resume to each job description makes your resume more ATS-friendly so hiring managers can quickly search resumes for the specific skills they want. It also demonstrates your interest in the role by showing how your experience directly aligns with the job requirements.
Teal’s Resume Job Description Match and Keyword tool make it so much easier to tailor your resume. When you create a resume, you can select a job from your Job Tracker to get an instant match score that lets you know how well your resume matches the job description. You get a list of keywords, including hard skills and soft skills, that you should include in your resume as appropriate. Aim for an 80% match score.
How to revamp your resume using AI
If the thought of rewriting or editing your resume sounds intimidating, try using an AI tool to help write and edit your resume. Generative AI tools like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT are great at coming up with new ideas, rephrasing sentences, or providing a starting point for your writing.
Note: Sometimes AI-generated writing sounds similar when the prompts words are similar, so always be sure to edit whatever writing you create with AI. You don’t want your resume to sound too much like the next one!
Instead of using a general AI tool, Teal is like ChatGPT specifically for your resume and cover letter. It’s programmed and knowledgeable about tailoring content to win interviews and jobs. Teal’s AI-powered Resume Builder makes the process of writing and refreshing a resume so much easier.
A resume revamp could boost your job search
To recap, revamping your resume involves reviewing your current resume, updating each section, optimizing the format and design, proofreading and editing the content, and getting feedback and making adjustments.
For your own hassle-free resume revamp, try the AI Resume Builder for free.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to revamp a resume?
The cost of revamping a resume (or CV, for UK and European terms) varies depending on whether you're revamping it yourself or hiring someone. Professional resume writers start at $50 for a basic review to $500 or more for a full rewrite of a single resume.
How much is a CV revamp?
Revamping your resume or CV yourself can be free or low-cost with tools like Teal, or professional resume writers charge anywhere from $50 for a basic review to $500 or more for a full rewrite. Keep in mind that’s only for one version of your resume.
What is the meaning of CV revamp?
A CV or resume revamp is the process of updating your resume to make it more effective. You can tackle everything from the design to the formatting, content, skills, and more.
