- February 25, 2025
- by Kalam Kagaz
- SOP Writing
Are you looking to update your old resume but don’t know how? Is all that printed mess bothering your soul? Well, don’t worry—we are here for the clutch!
Updating old resumes is part of the job industry when you have to switch positions from one company to another. Or, if you are looking to change the industry entirely and put your newly gained skills to use.
Either way, it is essential to know the trick to make your old resume data editable and accessible so that you can quickly apply to jobs and secure your dream job in no time. Such techniques, and much more, will be covered in today’s post.
The Role of Online Tools in Updating Resumes
The online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tools are your friend when it comes to converting paper junk lying around your work desk to editable and storable data.
When documents are digitized, they become easy to index, search through, and manage. Hence, allowing easy updates to your resumes, CVs, and other antique job documents.
Which Tool to Choose and Why?
Sure, OCR tools are great for updating your old resumes quickly and efficiently. But how can you utilize one, and where to get it? Let’s find out in this section.
Criteria for Tool Selection
Firstly, we recommend that the tool must be free to use with unlimited tries. If the OCR solution charges you a lot, then you’ll soon be out of money making your job documents editable and storable.
Second, we suggest that you read the reviews and ratings of the online/offline OCR solution. It should be a must that the tool is trustworthy and reliable in its functionality so that there are fewer errors during the text extraction process.
The Selected Option
Revisiting the criteria we just discussed, we selected the following tool for quickly updating an old resume. This option was found through Google’s SERP results through random searches on multiple keywords.
The image to text tool is a free online option that works on multiple image file formats to extract text from resumes. Its functionality is very smooth and it has a simple interface that makes it easy to use for everyone.
The biggest reason why we selected this OCR tool over any other option on the internet is because of its clutter-free working. The online platform doesn’t bug the user with sign-in/sign-up procedures and gets straight down to business.
Using the Chosen Tool for Updating an Old Resume
To give you an idea of how this tool works, we will get an old resume lying around the office. The goal is to extract its text to our computer so that we can later edit and update the mentioned content and print the document with a fresh outlook.
Now, we will upload this image file to the tool using the ‘Browse’ feature or by simply dragging and dropping the document into the converter’s interface.
After this step, simply click on the ‘Convert’ button to get started with the text extraction process.
As visible, the image to text converter has accurately made the old resume data ready to be downloaded as a .txt file or to be copied to the clipboard for further edits.
Naturally, the next step would be to use any resume template found through online platforms like Canva or Novo résumé. Then, input the extracted content into it and edit as you like to finalize the document in no time.
Important Considerations
While the whole process of quickly updating your old resume is straightforward, there are some important considerations that you should know.
Ensure the Right Camera Angle When Scanning Documents
This is an important consideration when trying to access data from old job documents through OCR tools.
Make sure to click the image at the right angle where the image doesn’t get too many horizontal or vertical tilts. This will ensure that the extracted text is accurate and precise.
Crop Unwanted Area during Image to Text Conversion
Using the image-to-text converter we mentioned earlier, crop out the extra part of the image and only get the textual data that matters. This cuts out unnecessary fluff from your output, helping you to focus on key elements that need updating in the resume.
Proofread the Extracted Data for Accuracy
Finally, we recommend that you proofread the outputs from the OCR tools to ensure accuracy in extracted data. Although mostly accurate, OCR technology is far from perfect and tends to make rare slip-ups, so be careful about it.
Final Words
Updating your old resume can be a painstaking task, especially when you try to manually digitize/transcribe job documents. That is why it is necessary to implement modern OCR solutions that can automate this task and save a lot of time and hassle.
With that said, you must be mindful when clicking the images for text conversion. Important considerations include getting the right angle and lighting conditions. Plus, cropping the unwanted area out of focus and proofreading the outputs whenever possible.
