Recently, I was speaking with a friend of mine who is a recruiter. She has been in the same position for over 10 years and had been presented with the possibility of an interesting job opportunity. When she was asked for a copy of her resume, she panicked! She didn’t have one! She knows first-hand the importance of presenting a powerful resume. She spends her days reviewing resumes and screening candidates. However, she hadn’t updated her own resume in nearly 15 years! She was re-hired into her current position and had done some consulting before that and hadn’t needed a “real” resume. How was she going to reconstruct 15 years of employment history and successfully convey her achievements and accomplishments when she couldn’t remember them! Frantically, she called former colleagues and friends and somehow put something together. The process was not pleasant and the end result did not truly communicate her abilities.
My friend is not the first person, nor will she be the last person, to experience that feeling of helplessness. She has seen first-hand the importance of keeping notes regularly on what she has accomplished. I don’t think she will be making that mistake again. Hopefully, she can be an example for us so we don’t have to go through what she went through. We all know that we should have a file that we keep notes in so that updating our resume will be a manageable process, but how many of us actually do it?
Start now. Grab a paper and write down the basics. Your title(s), employers, dates and brief description of what you have done and accomplished. You won’t regret it but you may regret pushing it off! It takes 5-10 minutes per quarter (max!) and it will make your life so much easier!