How often do you update your resume — and what, if anything, has given you pause? Have you wondered about including newer volunteer experience vs. older work experience? Which hobbies to include? How (or whether) to describe your previous jobs in a way that fits the company's ad?

Readers' Advice for the Easiest Ways to Keep Your Resume Updated

It's been years since we last discussed keeping your resume updated, but here are some great tips the readers offered:

Keep track of the numbers as you go. A few different readers mentioned this, with one noting:

“For me one of the hardest things to pin down is the concrete, hard numbers details recommended for a resume (project XYZ saved the company $A.B million dollars over C years!) since I’m not usually good at promoting myself that way, so I try to jot those down in my list as the projects happen or as I’m asked to make the cost saving projections.”

Another reader agreed that numbers were the way to go:

I try to use statistics and numbers as much as possible. Rather than “exceeded expectations” (which I see on a million resumes) I use specifics, like delivered the event 20% under budget with a 10% increase in attendance.

A third reader chimed in to add more figures to keep track of, like the “number of people you managed, and the size of your budget or the earnings of your business unit, etc.”

Keep a master resume just for yourself. One reader noted that she kept a master resume “that gets updated regularly whether it’s after starting a new job or completing a certain project that you think deserves its own entry. The Master resume is just mine, to keep a tally, so that when I am applying for a new position I can refer to it and pick only those things that are relevant to what I’m applying for.”

Don't look at your resume as set in stone. One reader noted that she started her resume from scratch after every new job title. She went on to explain,

I consider the next job I would like to do and then assess the sections on my resume based on that. If a previous achievement, work experience, internship does not contribute towards getting closer to that next job, then I remove it. I can always bring it up during interviews.

Also, I browse through LinkedIn profiles for the job function I am targeting and get inspiration from the different descriptions.

For achievements, I have a folder called “bragbook” and I copy in it my significant achievements throughout the year.

Such great advice, as always!

Here's my $.02, for what it's worth…

How Often I Update My Resume

Back when I was a practicing lawyer, I kept a running list of my latest accomplishments to consider adding to my resume, and tried to assess where the weaknesses were. Did I wish I could say I'd done more depositions? OK, let's try to get more experience there, then…

That said, I have barely updated my resume since I began creating content full time, to be honest — but if/when I do I think the resume will be highly customized to each job I'm interested in, highlighting the skills and experiences that would best serve me in the job. (Especially if I were submitting job applications online, I would definitely try to mirror the job application.)

Readers, over to you — how often do you update your resume?

Some of Our Previous Discussions on Resumes…

• How Long Should Your Resume Be?
• 6 New Resume Rules You Should Know About
• How to Get Your Resume Noticed

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / stockasso.

The post How Often Do You Update Your Resume — and What Has Given You Pause? appeared first on Corporette.com.

It's always a great time to talk about resume rules that you may not know about…

Previously, readers talked about whether or not they apply to jobs when they don't meet all the requirements (also see our imposter syndrome post), and a few years ago Kat answered a reader email about unusual ways to get your resume noticed.

Here are six resume rules that you may not have heard:

1. Know that the “one page” limit no longer applies. Depending on your career and circumstances, it's OK if your resume goes beyond a page. To figure out whether to make your resume one, two, or even three pages, check out these guidelines from Monster. No matter what, though, keep it concise — and make 100% sure there are no typos!

{related: here's how long your resume should be}

2. Tailor your resume to each position and company; don't keep sending every employer exactly the same one. Use the words and phrases from the job description in each resume, especially because it's more likely to be read by a computer first than by a human.

3. Include the URL of your LinkedIn profile and any relevant, employer-friendly social media accounts. (After all, the company is going to google you anyway!) If you have a portfolio website, include that too. By the way, if your LinkedIn URL looks something like this: linkedin.com/in/jane-smith-5cu95802, create a custom URL for your public profile (e.g., linkedin.com/in/janesmith) by updating your public profile settings.

{related: the differences between LinkedIn and your resume}

4. Include a summary or “personal branding statement” rather than an objective, which has fallen out of favor over the years. Here are some examples from the web:

• “corporate troubleshooter regularly assigned to the most challenging initiatives” (source)
• “cost-conscious benefits manager who has creatively tailored plans to employee needs at below average employer cost” (source)
• “online ad sales director with 12 years of experience leading sales teams in start-up, rapidly growing, and established companies” (source)

5. Don't leave college activities on your resume forever. Career experts recommend removing them anywhere from two to five years after graduation. And unless you're a recent graduate, don't include your graduation year.

Once you're past the “young professional” stage, leaving it off may protect you from age discrimination (and motherhood discrimination). (You might ask, “Well, can't they tell how old I am by looking at my listed positions?” but Alison Green of Ask a Manager recommends removing jobs that you held more than 15-20 years ago.)

6. Save and send/upload your resume as a PDF (rather than a Word document) so that the formatting will look exactly the same to the hiring manager as it does to you. 

Tip: I literally did not learn this until today, so some of you may not know this either — when you choose “Export” in Word and create a PDF, the formatting will be preserved, including hyperlinks.

(A note based on some of the comments — if you KNOW a bot will be looking at your resume, upload a plain .txt version as well as a PDF version for human eyes, if you can.)

When is the last time you updated your resume? How long is it? How much do you alter it for each position you apply for? For those of you who REVIEW resumes, what are your main takeaways? Have you read about any other new resume rules?

Psst: here are some of our latest posts on job hunting!

• What are the Best Employee Benefits & Perks?
• What to Look For in Interview Flats
• The New Job Negotiations
• Where to Find Interview Suits if You’re Pregnant
• How Many Paid Vacation Days Do You Get Every Year?

Further Reading:

• Getting Past the First Cut with a Resume That Grabs Digital Eyes [New York Times]
• How Long Can Your Resume Be? [Ask a Manager]
• 16 Things You Should Remove From Your Resume [The Ladders]
• Research: How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on Your Resume [Harvard Business Review]

Updated images via Stencil. Originally pictured: Pixabay.

The post 6 New Resume Rules That You May Not Know About appeared first on Corporette.com.

There's a trending story in The Washington Post about how Gen Z applicants are “scrubbing campus political activism from their resumes,” and I thought it might make an interesting discussion here. After all, we've talked about whether your Greek affiliations should be on your resume, and how long your resume should be, and how to indicate a sabbatical on your resume — but not this. (A side question that might also be worth pondering: Are you rephrasing your resume to better highlight tasks accomplished while working remotely? What kind of phrasing are you using?)

From the article:

After a surge of campus activism during the Trump years, a growing number of Gen Z job seekers are now discovering a downside to their political engagement. While employers say they are eager for diversity and advise applicants to “bring their whole selves” to the job hunt, Mackenzie and some of her peers don’t trust them to look beyond ideology.

“With disclosure comes exposure,” said Kacheyta McClellan, director of diversity, inclusion and belonging at the National Association of Colleges and Employers. He said it has always been an “act of bravery” for job seekers of color to be transparent about community organizing when applying for a job in a different field, even if the skills are transferrable.

For my $.02, I can definitely see a few reasons for keeping political activism off of your resume. One reason might be that certain clubs might, as the kids say, “slap differently” these days. I remember going to a few meetings of both the campus chapter of the ACLU and the campus chapter of The Federalist Society in law school — looking back at my resumes from the time period (I save a new draft with the date every time I update it), the ACLU made it to my resume, but The Federalist Society didn't.

I was never very involved in either, to be honest, so it's interesting that one made the cut and one did not. Maybe my perspective has changed (I've moved a lot farther to the left, for example), but it feels like saying you joined The Federalist Society in 2021 is very different than saying you joined the same club in 1999 or even 2014.

{related: why you should apply to jobs even when you don't meet the job “requirements”}

I have also used different resumes for different positions, so I might have listed The Federalist Society if I were applying to a law firm or company that did more conservative work, and omitted it if I were applying to a law firm or company that branded itself as more liberal.

Another reason here might be the idea that “you're a team player and can work with all sides” — so you may not want to advertise your political views on your resume, whether they skew to the left or the right. After all, the old rule used to be that you didn't talk politics at the office. Even during our last discussion on how to deal with political talk in the office (light years ago in 2014), a number of commenters noted that they preferred an office that was “more reticent with politics” and that civil discussion with differing views is par for the course.

Readers, let's discuss — have you ever put political-related clubs, charities, or activities on your resume that had a big, well-known “personality”? Would you be reluctant to put those on your resume today — or would it depend where you were applying and what the work was? If you're in a position to hire (or even part of the hiring process, such as an interviewer), what would you think if you received a resume that listed a politics-related club or charity?

{related: the easy way to keep your resume updated}

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post Politics… and Resumes appeared first on Corporette.com.

Readers had a great discussion in the comments the other day about how long your resume should be, and we thought it deserved its own post.

So, do tell: How long is your resume? Do you try to follow the age-old “keep it to one page” rule (now typically seen as out of date), or have you been in your career long enough that you've decided it's time to go to two, or even three? Or are you in a field (or a country) in which a CV is most common?

Readers Thoughts On How Long Resumes Should Be

Here are some examples that readers shared in the thread:

• 1 page (5 years of experience)
• 1 page (using a sidebar resume template to maximize space — we'd love to hear in general what you guys think about sidebars and resume templates!)
• 2 pages (12 years of experience)
• 2 pages (15 years of experience as a lawyer)
• 2 pages (30+ years of work)
• 2 pages (2 careers; previous is relevant to current)

{related: are there differences between LinkedIn and your resume?}

Expert Guidelines On Resume Length

For expert advice, check out these articles from Monster, The Muse, and Ask a Manager (2012, but still relevant); the advice slightly differs, so it's important to know what's typical for candidates in your field. But here are some brief, general guidelines:

1-page resume: (1) New grads/early career; up to 5–10 years of experience; (2) career changers; (3) people with 1 or 2 employers

2-page resume: (1) people at mid-career and beyond; (2) people with several relevant employers; (3) people who'd have to delete important accomplishments, etc., to stay at one page

3-page resume: (1) People in academia, government, or certain technical fields (YMMV); (2) senior-level managers and execs; (3) people (e.g., those in category 1) who need to list many accomplishments, such as speaking engagements, publications, and patents

{related: new resume rules you might not know!}

How long is your resume, how long have you been working, and what is your field? What are your thoughts on how long should your resume be? If you've gotten rid of certain elements to follow a one-page limit, how did you consolidate? (At what point did you drop school accomplishments or condense job experiences?) If you're involved in hiring at your company, what are your thoughts on the length of candidates' resumes?

Psst: some of our latest posts on job hunting!

• What are the Best Employee Benefits & Perks?
• What to Look For in Interview Flats
• The New Job Negotiations
• Where to Find Interview Suits if You’re Pregnant
• How Many Paid Vacation Days Do You Get Every Year?

{related: Greek affiliations and your resume}

Some must-read business books for women — update coming soon!

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / fizkes.

The post Here’s How Long Your Resume Should Be appeared first on Corporette.com.

Here's an interesting question for 2020: Does a link to your LinkedIn supersede your resume? What are the differences between LinkedIn and your resume? 

We've talked about newer resume rules you may not know about, as well as the best LinkedIn settings for job hunting, how to secretly use LinkedIn to change careers, and how to get the most out of your LinkedIn profile — but we haven't really talked about how to USE your LinkedIn profile in your job hunting adventures.

Some backstory here: A woman I know recently applied for a city council position in her small town, attaching a link to her LinkedIn profile instead of her resume. She was upset that she was rejected from the position without anyone clicking on the link, as she could see from her “who's viewed your profile” information. In her mind, she was rejected without anyone looking at her resume, even though she submitted it “the more modern way”… but I suspect the people interviewing thought she had not attached any resume at all. 

What Are the Differences Between LinkedIn and Your Resume?

So let's discuss. I'm curious for what you guys say here, but here are my thoughts for why a link to your LinkedIn profile does not supersede your resume: 

• A LinkedIn profile is not easily printable. Admittedly, almost everything is online and via Zoom calls lately, but I think that a lot of interviewers (particularly when there is a group reviewing resumes!) would rather look over printed resumes in their hand versus online profiles.
• LinkedIn is not customized. One of the big suggestions I have for people who are considering different career paths is to create more than one resume to emphasize different aspects of your experience and skillset — even just to make small changes in the wording or order of items. But particularly if you're applying to a new potential career path, I don't think a LinkedIn link would be helpful at all.
• LinkedIn is public. I may be in a slightly odd situation because I own my own business, but I absolutely think that any future resumes of mine will include numbers that I would not include in a public arena, whether they're regarding traffic or revenue. 
• There's a very real apathy/competency check with resumes (vs LinkedIn). Do you care about your resume? Are there typos? Have you formatted your resume properly so it prints well? Is it as brief as possible, or are you that 23-year-old who thinks you need three pages? 

I think there are times when a LinkedIn profile link might be appropriate, such as when it's a “here's who I'm connected to!” kind of email, or a “look I DO have a college degree now can we move past this silly requirement to volunteer for the alumni Halloween party” or something like that. (Which, perhaps, it could be argued a seat on city council is equivalent to…) That said, though, in general I don't think the old-fashioned, PDF'd resume is going anywhere. Looking around the web, I noticed that The Muse, Undercover Recruiter, and Top Resume think there are real differences between the resume and LinkedIn as well. 

Readers, what are your thoughts — what are the differences between LinkedIn and your resume? When should you use one versus the other?

Full disclosure: I own stock in Microsoft, which is the parent company of LinkedIn.

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post Are There Differences Between LinkedIn and Your Resume? appeared first on Corporette.com.

There's a new trend that I thought would be interesting to discuss: failure résumé. Do you keep a failure résumé, either an “official” one or a mental one? Where is the line between “dwelling on your failures” and recognizing that often, growth comes from failures? 

There are a number of articles on failure résumés lately — here's how The New York Times described them:

Whereas your normal résumé organizes your successes, accomplishments and your overall progress, your failure résumé tracks the times you didn’t quite hit the mark, along with what lessons you learned. … 

Melanie Stefan, a lecturer at Edinburgh Medical School, knows this well. A few years ago, she called on academics to publish their own “failure résumés,” eventually publishing her own. On it, she lists graduate programs she didn’t get into, degrees she didn’t finish or pursue, harsh feedback from an old boss and even the rejections she got after auditioning for several orchestras.

What’s the point of such self-flagellation?

Because you learn much more from failure than success, and honestly analyzing one’s failures can lead to the type of introspection that helps us grow — as well as show that the path to success isn’t a straight line.

Innnnteresting. We've shared our best advice for how to get over a mistake at the office, and discussed how to get over career hiccups, and I think I even noted in an older post that for a while I kept a running Excel spreadsheet of all the various things I perceived as Screwups, both minor and major. (If memory serves I even had a rating scale.) I don't think anyone is suggesting that!

But it is an interesting exercise to think about failures in terms of growth. What were the big failures in your life — and what did you learn from them? What would others learn about you from your failures?

Briefly, some of the big failures in my own life:

Failed driver's test at age 16 because I glossed over the “road” portion and practiced the parallel parking over and over. Got a 100 on parallel parking, and like a 16 out of 100 on the driving portion because I didn't realize that a parking lot stop sign might not be a red hexagon and just be printed STOP on the ground. (Blew past two before I even left the parking lot to take the tester on the road.)

Didn't get into Harvard. I really, really, really wanted to go to Harvard, mostly so I could write for the Lampoon. If memory serves I wasn't even wait-listed, just flat out rejected. (I maybe even applied early application? Hmmn.)

Other big school failures: did not get into Columbia or NYU, when I really, really, really wanted to stay in NYC for law school. (I may have applied midway through law school — and maybe even got accepted? — but decided to stay at Georgetown because I was enjoying teaching legal research and writing and pretty involved with law review.)

Didn't even apply for judicial clerkships, which is not so much a failure as a deep regret — when I was going through law school I felt ancient and was eager for Life to Start — and knowing that when I graduated I'd be 27, I didn't even consider applying to judicial clerkships, and I wish I had. 

I'll keep pondering my more recent personal and professional failures (whee) — but I begrudgingly can see the benefit of keeping a list of major failures like this. Much like the 60-second meditation app I wrote about last week, there's a “focusing” effect here that is interesting — seeing which failures come into focus first, how you write them out — and it's interesting to think through how that failure affected your life, the things that would not have happened had you succeeded instead of failed.

Readers, how about you — do you keep a failure résumé? Play along today — what would be three big failures you might list on a failure résumé?

Further Reading: 

• Do You Keep a Failure Résumé? Here’s Why You Should Start. [New York Times]
• Write a Failure Résumé to Learn What Makes You Succeed [Harvard Business Review]
• The Surprising Benefits of Creating a ‘Failure Resume' [Mental Floss]

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