4 Steps: Update Your Resume

Some media outlets are looking for the ideal term to rightly describe the current economic crisis. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hints at a “second Great Depression,” while outlets like Bloomberg quote analysts discussing “The Great Recession.” Of course, a slump by any other name will feel just as bad; certain sectors -- finance, banking, customer service -- have already been throttled, and more stand to falter before any sort of recovery begins.

Of the many consequences, one is especially obvious: More people, with increasingly better qualifications, will be going after the very few jobs that are out there. This new level of competition augments the already Darwinian nature of the job market and insists that you adapt to these circumstances. We’re offering the following four steps to help you update your resume with that goal in mind.

Step 1 : Put your resume into a new file format
If you haven’t updated your resume recently, then this first step may seem rather drastic. However, there’s tremendous value in putting your resume into a new file format -- say, from a Word doc into a PDF file. It’s a one-stop super-overhaul of your entire resume, analogous to moving your TV, stereo and gaming platform from the shelves of a TV stand and into an entertainment center. Provided you don’t use a program to do it for you, the process will force you to review your resume in its entirety, line by line, as opposed to merely tweaking a few lines here and there.

You have a number of format options, including PDF, HTML, plain-text, and rich-text. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages; determining which will best serve you depends on factors beyond the scope of this piece.

Step 2: Strip your resume down
Lean economic times call for a leaner resume, one that isn’t too indulgent or stacked with excessive information that may have no bearing on the job you’re seeking. At the very least, your resume should, to an outside viewer, appear to acknowledge the state of the current job market.

Imagine the resume traffic on the desks of human resource managers in an economy like this; it’s likely overwhelming, which does not bode well for overloaded resumes that require added time and consideration. So, if your CV is longer than a single page, your chief task at this step will be to bring it down to one page. Put surplus educational or training information on the chopping block; the stock on book smarts right now is low. You can always expand on sections like those during an interview.

Take this opportunity to make your resume stand out even further by stripping away any clichés or standard responses. This might include striking an introductory statement or objective regarding your professional goals.

Step 3: Insert evidence into your resume
At this stage, your resume should be heavy on applicable, practical work experience and thin in most other areas. In order to ensure that you make this point clear, enhance that experience with the kind of evidence anyone can understand: hard numbers. In other words, shape your work experience so that it fiscally reflects your achievements. It doesn’t matter whether those achievements relate to cutting costs and saving money or to boosting sales and making money -- the overriding key is communicating your productive value.

This will be much harder for some than it will be for others, since it’s not common for all of us to know exactly how we contributed to the company’s bottom line. In that case, work in the opposite direction. For example, identify how, where and to what extent your department expanded during the time you worked in it. Then shrink down the scope of these figures until they reach reasonable levels for someone in your position. Just be careful how you phrase this; don’t claim credit you don’t deserve -- instead, let the reader infer that credit by association.

Step 4: Proof read your resume
It might be easy to scoff at this last step, but be warned; there will be those who take it seriously, meaning that you just allowed your competition to get a leg up on you. Because of the increased competition, few can afford even the smallest disadvantages, and neglecting to fully proofread is one you can avoid. In any job market, there is little tolerance for spelling errors, but in this market there is even less.

You can begin with a spell-check, but you probably know very well by now that most standard spell-checks are full of holes. Let it catch the major gaffes in the first run-through. Then subject that version to at least one other set of eyes, ones you trust.

Finally, since your resume is in a new format, the last bit of proofreading should be to e-mail it to yourself, or the same close friend who was your second set of eyes, and reopen it to ensure the integrity of your new format.