Whether you’re looking for a new job or not, updating your resume is an important task. I try to remember to give mine a review annually, usually during the first week of the new year, though you can also tie your reminders to things like your birthday, a holiday like Memorial Day, the start of your summer vacation, or whatever else you think you’ll remember.
If you’re not looking for a new job, the process is pretty straightforward: open the document and read through your current role. Add any new projects, and make sure the descriptions still reflect what you do at work. If you have a lot of new info to add, you might need to remove some older or less relevant information to keep it to 2 pages (unless you’re in academia or medicine).
But if you’re seeking something new, it’s time to get to the edits! Start by getting as clear as you can on the new roles you’re looking for. Get a sense of the language they’re using, how your past roles have overlapped or been similar, and if you need to reframe things to show their relevance.
If the new job looks like something you did years ago, you may want to have a section towards the top that you call something like Relevant Experience that focuses on that. Keep a chronology in that section, with your most recent related role (volunteer or paid) on top, going backwards in time. Under that, you can have a section called Other Professional Experience or some such, with an additional chronology there. Put most of your energy into the relevant section, with details and outcomes there and more minimal descriptions of the other stuff further down.
If you’re trying to get into a field that’s new to you, we’ll have to get a bit more creative. Really think about how your previous experiences translate into the new thing you want. Think about the simplest, most basic description of your old roles—how you would explain the job to your grandmother or a high schooler. Then think about how those things overlap with the new job descriptions, including things like similar software. This may wind up being a fairly messy process, but it’s worth it so you can demonstrate your ability to do the new thing and not risk your application being thrown out immediately. Be as clear as possible, bearing in mind that the first person who looks at your application probably doesn’t especially understand the role.
You may even want to make a list of what they’re seeking so you can connect each of those pieces with your experiences, a sort of “what they want/what I offer” list. That will make connecting those dots a bit easier for you, though it takes some doing.
Then you’ll want to run the edited document and the job description through a comparison site like Cultivated Culture, JobScan, or ResumeWorded to make sure you’re hitting the right keywords.
Finally regardless of where you are in the job market, once you’ve polished your resume, make sure you have a friend or family member read through it. Ask them to look for typos, things that are unclear, or bits that sound a bit too much like AI wrote them. The human touch is essential, after all!
