Tristan talks about updating your resume or career journal. The moral of the story here is make sure you aren’t forgetting to document where you have created some type of value. Make sure you stay ready so you don’t have to get ready! You’ll thank Tristan later.
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TRANSCRIPT
Tristan: What’s going on, Living Corporate? It’s Tristan, and I want to thank you for tapping back in with me as I provide some tips and advice for professionals. Today, let’s talk about updating your resume or career journal.
We’re 6-months in, half way through the year. We made it to summer y’all. But if these last couple of years have been as much of a blur for you as they have for me, then you’re probably having trouble remembering whether some of the things you’ve done actually happened this year or last year. This especially rings true for things you’ve done in your career. Prior to the pandemic, when working with clients, I noticed that once we got about 2 years back, they had issues remember the things they accomplished, details of projects they’ve been on, and some of the results they created. Now, I’m finding that window of memory is getting shorter and shorter thanks to how time has been running together.
Any of you who have been listening to this podcast long enough know that it’s important to update your career journal or resume often. I tend to recommend you update your career journal at least monthly and your resume at least quarterly, but let’s be real, that can be a little difficult to do. So, if you haven’t touched that career journal or that resume at all this year, this is your reminder to hold your future self down by documenting what you’ve been up to.
To help you out, let’s talk about a few things you might want to consider writing down.
If you’re on or leading a project, document the size of the project team, the project’s budget, your direct involvement in the project, stakeholders you managed, the project results, tools you utilized to manage the project, and if it was on-schedule or under budget.
If you improved a process, consider writing down what the process was previously, what exactly you changed, who you worked with or consulted, and the results generated from improving the process.
If you are leading teams, write down the size of the teams, what you’ve led them to do, and if you’ve trained the team on anything.
If you’re managing budgets, write down the size of the budget, who you’re working with to manage the budget, and any tools you’re utilizing to manage that budget.
If you’re in sales, account management, or portfolio management, consider the number of accounts, the size of the portfolio, the size of the region you cover. Think about all the metrics you’re measured on and write down your performance for those. These could include amount of sales in dollars, performance year-over-year, conversion rates, retention rates. If you increased sales, by how much and using what strategies.
If you’re in marketing, recall the campaigns you worked on, think about type of campaigns they were, the clients they were for, the campaign results, the tools you used, and who you collaborated with.
If you’re in the healthcare field, you might want to think about your caseload, new techniques you’ve trained on, or unique cases you’ve worked on.
If you’re in education, consider the amount of students you’ve worked with, the number of courses you’ve taught, improvement in performance metrics and test scores, programs you’ve put on, committees you’ve participated in and what you’ve accomplished with those committees, school improvement initiatives you’ve participated in, the amount of people you’ve coached, observed or mentored.
These are just a few suggestions that came top of my mind. But, the morale of the story here is make sure you aren’t forgetting to document where you have created some type of value. This information will become helpful when you want to update your resume or LinkedIn, when you’re preparing examples for your interviews, or negotiating a raise. Make sure you stay ready so you don’t have to get ready, believe me, you’ll thank me later.
This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @layfieldresume, or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn.
