I try to update my resume every month or two. I make the time. I do the reading and the research to make it current and the best document I could have to represent me. I capture those tasks that help describe the role I have now. I edit the previous job tasks to simplify, make more concise. It becomes an evolving document. All of this is much easier to do when NOT under a time crunch, say, when actively searching for a different position.
A resume is a view of how my career is going. It’s simple, concise, I try to keep it at two pages. It objectively says that I am making progress in my career, or it says that I need to reach for new, more current and more interesting technological problems to solve.
When I began as a systems administrator, I read many books on interviewing and resumes. Two books were:
I have an emotional attachment to these two because I was given them by my baby brother. Good advice, and worth re-reading.
Much more work but very effective are:
and
These books I follow and update every two or three years. They are not simple to work through – the process Martin Yate outlines demands a lot of examination of the job environment, the language, what’s current. It takes hours of time. I gave these books to my son to work through for his resume, and his complaint was exactly that – it takes time.
Again, better to do it on an ongoing basis. And the time is well worth it.
A side effect is I suddenly get a lot of calls from recruiters and companies with open positions – updating a resume triggers it as a new result in search engines that keep track of these things. But – that’s what caller ID and voicemail are for. And I stopped putting a phone number on the html version.
— doug