Touch Your Resume

One of the pieces of advice that I give in my talk "The Modern Resume" is that you should review, and likely touch, your resume once a quarter. It was a habit I got into when I worked in the corporate world after having a startup company that I worked for fail.

That experienced bothered me, I didn't like the instability near the end of that company's life, and so I decided that I didn't want to get caught in that situation again. When I went to JD Edwards, there was a feeling of instability at times before they were purchased by Peoplesoft, and it seemed I was reviewing my resume on a regular basis then.

My simple advice:

• Set a calendar reminder for every 3 months to review your resume.
• When it remind you, open your resume and spend a few minutes looking it over. Think about what you've done over the last quarter and see if there is something you should add. Things to consider
  • Position/responsibility change
  • Certifications/degrees earned
  • Training taken
  • Volunteering you've done.
  • Articles/books/speaking engagements
• Look for things to remove if you've added something.
• Close it and mail a copy to yourself at home or another location (we want resume DR as well).

These simple steps should take you 5 minutes a quarter, and it's worth it for managing your career.

And if you have nothing to add, think about that as well. Perhaps you should be looking to grow your career a little and undertake something worth adding to your resume.