Naturally, there is a career progression throughout your career. You continue to gain experience and develop skills from company to company. However, it’s common that people only make adjustments or update their resume when they are looking for a new job. The more productive way? Keep your resume a “living document”. Find out how and why, below.

Conflicts

Only updating your resume when you’re looking for a new job can be counterproductive as the information can easily become outdated. Maybe your email or your address has changed, maybe you have new certifications or skills that you have developed. Updating this frequently will help keep the information concise, clear, relevant, and parallel to your career.

Tailoring Becomes Easier

Because applying to jobs online is the norm, tailoring your resume is key. For example, maybe a company is solely looking for someone with technical experience and you work with various software or programs that are relevant to that job. However, if there is another position that is looking for emphasis with years of experience and skills – then those programs may not be as necessary to include. Tailoring your resume depending on the company will help emphasize your skills or experienced – which results in you consistently making edits and updates to your resume.

Allows Your Resume to Stay Relevant

If you are working in an industry that has new programs releasing, or new certifications being introduced – you can add these as you learn them or as you become certified. For example, say you are applying to a position in social media/marketing. As new trends become introduced, being familiar or knowledgeable with trends/platforms will help you be a more valuable candidate.

Helps You Stay Organized

Trying to recall responsibilities from a position you no longer have can be challenging. If you update your resume in real-time while you’re in that current position, you can recall specific statistics, programs, and responsibilities much easier. For previous positions, a great way to recall some of your tasks is to Google your old job description. There will be many different job descriptions, so try to find the one that is most similar to yours. From there, cross reference any responsibilities that aligned with your previous positions. Then going forward, all the information will be accurate and up to date – and you can continue to update it as you go.

Be More Prepared

If you do come into contact with a company or stumble upon a position that you are interested in – your resume is already ready to be submitted. You don’t have to carve out time to research, update, edit, review, and finalize your resume before applying. This helps with any spur of the moment openings to not miss out on a great opportunity.

Helps You With Your Search

If you are consistently updating your resume and LinkedIn, you can casually job search at any time. Job seekers who only update their resume/LinkedIn when they begin job searching, make it more apparent that they are looking to pursue other positions. With this constantly being updated, you can search for positions at any given moment.

 

 

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