An old CV rarely needs to be thrown out. It needs the top third rewritten, the dates corrected, and a decade of layout habits stripped out. If you have half an hour and the job you want open in another tab, work top to bottom and fix the highest-impact things first. That order matters, because a recruiter reads the same way.
Start where recruiters start
The first screen is the header and the summary, so start there. Delete the objective line if you still have one, those went out years ago, and replace it with two sentences that name your current role and your strongest result. Then fix the contact block: a current phone number, a professional email, and a LinkedIn URL that actually resolves.
- Kill dead detail: remove your home address, your date of birth, and any job older than roughly 12 years.
- Refresh the top role: rewrite your most recent job first, since it carries the most weight and is probably the most out of date.
- Update the tools: swap software you no longer use for what the target role lists, as long as you genuinely use it.
- Re-verb the bullets: change “responsible for” and “duties included” into past-tense action verbs.
Fix the format, then the fit
Old CVs carry old formatting: two columns, a header photo, tables, and text boxes that modern parsers choke on. Flatten it to a single column with standard section headings. Once the structure is clean, spend your last ten minutes on fit, mirroring the exact language of the job posting so the keywords line up.
When the bones are back in shape, run it through the resume checker for a quick health read, then tailor it per role for the specific job. The bullet point writer speeds up the rewrite, and if the layout is beyond saving, an ATS-friendly template gives you a clean base to paste into.