Celebrating International Update Your Resume Month

By Amy Lindgren

For the AJC

So here’s a holiday you probably don’t have marked in your calendar: International Update Your Resume Month (September), as determined by the career professionals who make up the association called Career Directors International.

For what it’s worth, it’s also National Life Insurance Month, and probably about 15 other kinds of month as well.

While I can’t help noticing the self-serving nature of professionals claiming a month for their very own (I’ve already received several press releases from resume companies hoping to snag publicity), I have to admit: It’s a good idea to review your resume (and probably your life insurance) on an annual basis -- especially in the thick of one’s working years, when an unexpected request for a resume could come at any time.

So why not now? If you do this every year or so, it will be quicker and easier each time. This is especially true if you’ve been writing things down throughout the year that will go on the updated resume. Here are a few items you’ll want to include in your next resume update.

1. Your current or most recent job. This includes more than simply adding the title and company, although that’s certainly important. But ask yourself: In the past year, what have you accomplished in your job? Which teams have you been part of? Which customers have you served? Have you led any initiatives? This is all important, and it’s all at risk of being lost if it doesn’t get written down regularly.

2. Education. Of course you’ll remember to note a degree that you’ve finished. But what about all those company seminars and the workshops you took at conferences? Although you might not include everything on the resume, it’s smart to write everything down for future reference.

3. Professional activities. Did you join any associations or attend any conferences? Follow the same guideline as for the education material -- write it all down, even if you might not end up using it on the resume. Don’t forget to include presentations you’ve given or articles you’ve written.

4. Personal and community activities. Leadership roles are especially important to note, so if you’ve been coaching a kids’ sport team or volunteering for a nonprofit board of directors, be sure it gets noted somewhere. Ditto for personal accomplishments, such as completing your first 10K run. Again, it might not go on the resume, but you’ll want it in this year’s file all the same.

Now that you have a fat folder or computer file with all your achievements and activities for the year, it’s time to decide what will go on the resume. If this will be a simple update, where your only goal is ensuring accuracy, you can just start dropping the new information into the appropriate categories on the existing document.

If, however, you’re in a job search or planning to circulate your resume over the next few months, you might want to combine your update with a revision. Not to get too technical, but a revision goes deeper than an update and would include an assessment of the message and audience, with a likely format change to emphasize new points for a new purpose.

For example, suppose you are an IT person who has just completed project management training. If you’d like to test the market for project management jobs, you’ll want to do more than simply add the certificate to the education section of your resume. You probably want to redirect the entire document to show project management experience as it’s been happening in each job. You might even add a headline and success category to highlight this skill.

Your last step, whether you’re revising or only updating your resume, is to verify your contact information at the top of the page. This includes deciding which phone numbers and e-mail box to use and whether to add a LinkedIn address. Now is also a good time to call those phone numbers, to check the appropriateness of your outgoing voice mail message.

OK -- you did it! You’re up-to-date and ready to respond to last-minute opportunities for in-house promotions, volunteer leadership roles and can’t-resist job openings. Don’t throw away the file of update information, by the way. Some of the unused bits might come in handy when it’s time to do a work-sample portfolio.

But portfolios are probably celebrated in a different month, so we’ll get back to those another time. Right now, I’ve got my hands full preparing for Revise Your Work Schedule Month, which is just around the corner. Sure, that’s not until May, but why wait until the last minute?

Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 626 Armstrong Ave., St. Paul, MN 55102.