Reflections on a updated resume.

Posted: August 17th, 2009 | Author: A.J. | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: failure, resume | No Comments »

I updated the resume yesterday to include my current job .  It was a moment of pride as I’ve reached a point where I’ve accumulated enough work experience that I had to re-size my resume’s text to 10pt. to make sure everything fit on one page (I read this was the lowest you should go on your resume).  At the same time it was a pain in the ass to whittle down months to a years worth of work into a few bullet points!

I reflected on the continuous flow which I was able to move from one job to the next over the past two years.  Months ending and months beginning connect with few gaps.  Everything on there was relevant to the jobs I’m seeking in terms of showing a 360 composition of what I offer, leadership, communication, and interpersonal ability.

That being said  I do believe in tailored resumes, but at this stage in my career, I haven’t done enough and worked long enough to fill a whole page with my time at two, let alone one, of my past jobs.

There’s an application on the iPhone that notifies you when updates for other applications have been made available.  I don’t know how it would work, but it’d be great to have a iLife (name probably already taken) that tracked an updated certain aspects of your life online, whether adding a new title on LinkedIn or new responsibilities, and then all you did was press update and ,BOP, new bullet points!

That’s only wishful thinking.  I actually do like figuring out how to best express in a few words what I did/accomplished on a particular job.

Also on the subject of resumes, I came across this website courtesy of @AAGardner on failure resumes.  The idea is to “craft a résumé that summarizes all their biggest screw ups” as a way to gain insight into what you learned from those mistakes.  I know I’ve gained a lot of experience through failure or ridding the line close to it.

It’s never fun, and I am a person who usually doesn’t dwell too long on them, but this exercise would be constructive.  I’ll give it a try and post later this week.  I’d love to see what other folks came up with.

//A.J.

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