If you're like most people, you'll shove it out of sight as fast as you can. And you won't give it another thought until the next time you need to find a job. In fact, there's probably a good chance you'll never see it again—such things have a way of getting lost.
Unless you keep your resume and other job-search materials current, you won't be able to leap on any great job opportunities that pop up unexpectedly. Furthermore, the highs of life are often abruptly followed by lows. Should you find yourself suddenly unemployed, you'll lose days, maybe weeks, getting re-outfitted for the job hunt.
You need to update your resume when your professional situation or career goals change, or when you have an important accomplishment to add.
You should keep the raw elements of your resume—the data from which you compile your resume-as well as your list of networking contacts and potential employers up-to-the-minute and close at hand. Here's a simple way to do just that.
The career file system
You're going to create one master file that will contain everything you need to launch a job search: details of your experience, skills, accomplishments, and education, along with names and addresses of networking contacts, potential employers and people who might agree to provide you with a personal or professional reference.
You could just keep the worksheets as well as a stack of blanks in a file drawer somewhere. But you'll find this information more accessible if you develop a more efficient system: Either use your computer to capture and classify this material, or get a supply of 3x5 index cards, a box to keep them in and a set of subject-divider index cards—the ones with the little tabs on the top.
Whether you use your computer or the index cards, you will break up career information into small pieces or "bytes." One byte, for example, could list a valuable job contact, the details of a work experience, or a specific skill.
You can organize and break out the information any way that makes sense to you. You might divide your career information into the following categories:
- Professional Experience.
- References.
- Accomplishments.
- Volunteer Experience.
- Education.
- Skills.
- Other Training.
- Network Contacts.
Or, you might organize according to particular areas of skill:
- Management Skills.
- Financial Skills.
- Communication Skills.
- Computer Skills.
- Technical Skills.
- Organizational Skills.
Each entry should be a self-standing piece of information—don't carry over data from one entry to the next. Once you've compiled all of your career data, sort it according to topic. Then organize it in your card box according to subject matter.
If you use the index cards, a typical card might include the computer skills like languages and programs you know.
Everything related to your job search will be housed neatly in one place. Here are just some of the advantages this system offers you:
- Updating your job-search information is a quick and simple process. Any time you have a new piece of data to add to your file, you simply jot it down on a card or enter it into your file. If you learn a new skill, you note it as a new entity. When you achieve a special goal, you detail it in an "Accomplishments" entry. If someone tells you to look them up if you ever want a job, you capture that person's name and address under an "Employers" entry, along with a short description of the conversation you had.
- When you need to find a particular piece of information, you don't have to sort through stacks of papers. Information is easy to find and at your fingertips.
- You keep track of experience and accomplishments you might otherwise forget. Your current resume, for example, might not reflect a volunteer position you held two years ago, because that position wasn't relevant to your previous job search. But suppose you change career directions, and that volunteer work gave you the kind of experience you need to get a job in your new field. Scanning your career file will remind you about forgotten skills and accomplishments—and provide all the details you need to include them on your next resume.
- You can easily sort and organize your career information—a great benefit when it comes time to write your resume. You can take out all of your pertinent index cards and lay them out in the order that information might appear on your resume—or pull up your computer file and view the order onscreen. If the order doesn't seem quite right, you can rearrange until you're satisfied. From there, it's simple to transfer information onto paper in resume form.
It only works if you use it
Once you have created your initial career file, you must train yourself to update it frequently. This will take some discipline at first. After a while, this system will become second nature to you, and you will quickly realize that the benefits of this system far outweigh any effort on your part.
