TIPS FOR UPDATING YOUR RESUME OR LINKEDIN PROFILE

Updating a resume can feel daunting and overwhelming–especially if we’ve had it sitting in a folder for years (or decades) without any use.

That said, it doesn’t have to. If you are considering dusting off and polishing up your resume, here are a few resources to help you along the way.

Step One: Find Your Resume.

Often the idea of updating our long-neglected resume can feel scarier than starting to do it. As a first step, simply take a look around your archives and dig out the latest version. Pull it up on the screen. Take a look. Put it somewhere easy to find for future.

Step TWO: THINK ABOUT THE PURPOSE BEHIND YOUR RESUME.

Are you thinking about applying for a new role within your company? Are you thinking about applying for a new job? Or, are you thinking of a complete career change?

Consider these questions before you dig in and start updating. Write down your stake in the ground for your resume—its core why and purpose. From there, you can consider how the resume can best serve this purpose through the content and history that you decide to feature.

For example:

• If you are currently in healthcare IT, are you thinking of staying in Healthcare IT? If so you could keep that focus and industry-specific language. If you are thinking of branching out, you can make the industry-specific lingo more general and translatable.

• If you are currently in education, are you thinking of staying in education? If so, you can keep your resume (and LinkedIn) education focused, whereas if you are thinking of switching careers altogether, you might consider how experience leading a classroom of high schoolers could translate to leading a project or team within the corporate setting, and use language that helps resume readers make this mental translation.

STEP THREE: SHARE NOT ONLY WHAT YOU DID, BUT WHAT THE IMPACT WAS

Ideally, your resume does not read as merely a reverse-chronological list of tasks and instead includes the impact you had in various roles over time. To accomplish this balance, you might consider including the roles you had; the specific things you were responsible for; and the impact you had.

For example:

• Did all of your projects finish on time and on budget? Include that.

• Did you help to grow a product, team, or division? Include that.

• Did you experience above-average retention or results on the team that you were responsible for? Include that.

Before making any edits to your official resume, I often recommend to clients simply making a list. Start with a blank sheet of paper in a notebook or electronically, and simply write down everything that you remember doing at work in recent years. Don’t filter or judge. Simply make a list. Oftentimes there are many things we’ve done, led, or created that we’ve simply forgotten about. This is one exercise that will help us remember.

From here, we can start to create themes and threads and official content that will make it onto our resume and LinkedIn. Note: it is often easier to start by updating LinkedIn, versus your resume, because it is easy to make changes in real-time. You can also change your settings so that they don't show "activity updates" - if you don't want LinkedIn to notify your network of your every move.

We can also create a master version of our resume which contains everything (and is not restricted in length), and then we can save off various versions of this resume depending on the type of role we are applying for or the professional season that we are in.

Thank you to the fabulous women leaders who suggested this approach!

STEP FOUR: PAINT A PICTURE OF WHO YOU ARE AS A WHOLE PERSON.

Your resume and LinkedIn profile are opportunities to provide a glimpse into who you are as a whole person. A few small but impactful ways to incorporate your full self into your resume and LinkedIn include:

• Headers - add a header to your resume and LinkedIn that provides a quick snapshot of who you are. For example:

  • Healthcare IT Leader Passionate about Health Equity

  • Education Leader with Experience Leading, Coaching, and Mentoring Others

  • Energy Efficiency Professional Looking for a New Opportunity

  • Published Researcher and Scientist + Founder

• Bio / About - add this on LinkedIn.

  • Talk about who you are, what you do in a nutshell, areas of expertise, passions and interests.

  • This is also a great blank canvas to provide more context about who you are and what you are looking for.

  • In this section, you might include keywords at the bottom, listed as specializations, skills, or interests. For example:

    • Specializations: Healthcare IT, Change Management, Leadership, Equity.

• Experience

  • For each of your roles, break down what you were doing (role) and the impact you had (within that role).

  • Add some pertinent details.

  • Focus on the impact in addition to the tasks and roles.

To make this process more fun, you might consider a few small ways to add joy to the process. Put on a great playlist. Light a candle. Drink some hot chocolate. Work on the updates from a sunny corner of your porch. It doesn’t have to feel daunting. As one dear client and friend said recently, “don’t overthink it, or it will paralyze you.” Great advice!

Here are a few additional, related resources to support you along the way.

• This post has some info on a functional (vs chronological) resume

• This post has a few tips on updating LinkedIn

• This article has some tips on using action verbs

• Even if you aren’t quite ready to update your resume and LinkedIn profile, you can start working on your brag sheet.

Happy updating.