How To Update Your Resume For 2021 Career Opportunities in 10 Simple Steps
What better way to start the year than with an updated resume to go after your 2021 career goals?
Carving a little time out of your busy schedule to update your resume will pay off big time by keeping you prepared to apply for any role that becomes available this year.
There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great opportunity posted online and not being able to apply because your resume is outdated, not targeted, or doesn’t show your value.
With economists predicting that millions of new jobs will be added in the next few months, you’ll thank yourself for prioritizing updating your resume this month.
JANUARY IS THE BEST TIME TO APPLY FOR JOBS
Did you know that more people land new jobs in January than at any other time of year?
Here’s why you’re more likely to see way more jobs on job boards and online at the beginning of the year:
New budgets allow for new staff
Current employees advance to new roles or leave the company - leaving their job open
New company challenges or goals require new people to help them overcome or solve them
New trends and evolutions require new experts
Job searching does tend to slow down during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s because of people being out of the office. But once January 2nd hits, it’s a non-stop race to get top-notch candidates to fill essential roles.
It’s for these reasons that placing “update my resume” on your to-do list is important.
NOT HAVING YOUR RESUME UPDATED CAN HOLD YOU BACK
It never fails - someone reaches out to the Thompson Resume Writing Co. team and needs their resume refreshed ASAP for a job opening that will close soon. Unfortunately, this happens often.
Failing to have an updated resume handy prevents you from going after opportunities as soon as they become available. This means that you’re missing out on roles that could elevate your career, increase your salary, and change your life.
In a previous blog post, we talked about the benefits of having an updated resume which includes being among the first people to be considered for a role, being prepared for layoffs or terminations, and more.
By the time you do have an expert update your resume, dozens of jobs that you would have been able to land an interview for have now passed you by.
The same goes for promotions and applying to advance internally. If your supervisor asks to see your resume to consider you for advancement and your resume isn’t updated with your most recent accomplishments and the value you brought to the company, you could have killed your chances.
UPDATE YOUR RESUME IN 10 SIMPLE STEPS
Follow these 10 easy steps to update your resume today.
1. CHECK YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION
Did you change your phone number?
Did you get a new email address?
Have you moved to a new city and state?
Be sure the information you have listed for recruiters to contact you is accurate and up to date. Bonus tip: Make sure your voicemail is set up with a nice professional greeting and isn’t full.
2. REMOVE OLD + IRRELEVANT JOBS
The general rule of thumb is to have no more than 7 to 10 years of experience listed on your resume. You also want to delete jobs that aren’t relevant to what you currently do.
For example: if you started in customer service but you’re now in marketing, you can take off your former customer service roles and focus on highlighting your accomplishments in the marketing roles.
Any job before 2010 can be removed at this point. But there are some exceptions to this:
If you’ve been at the same company for 10+ years
If you’ve recently made a career pivot in the past 3 years
If you’re an executive or budding leader and want to show your advancement and growth
These are the only scenarios where having jobs older than 10 years is acceptable.
3. THROW IN NEW SKILLS + REMOVE OLD ONES
Did you become a project management master this year?
Are you now a marketing automation expert?
Have you become the king or queen of coding and design?
Any new specialties that you’ve added to your skillset should be added to your resume. As you add new skills and grow in your profession, you should be removing older ones that aren't as crucial to your success or are no longer relevant. Take off skills that come off as buzzwords, too. These include:
Excellent communication skills
Hard worker
Results-oriented
Change agent
4. REMOVE DATES
If you graduated from college more than three years ago, you can remove your graduation year from your resume. The same goes for completed certifications and training that haven’t been completed recently.
Dates can sometimes work against you as recruiters can use them to try and determine your age. Keep them from guessing by eliminating dates altogether.
For certifications that have expiration dates, you can list the month and year it expires but you don’t have to list when you obtained it.
5. INCLUDE NEW EDUCATION + CERTIFICATIONS
Went back to school and finished your Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, or Ph.D.?
Finished a prestigious certificate?
Survived an intense Bootcamp or course?
You already know what we’re about to say - add it to your resume! Your education, certifications, and training add to your value and qualifications. Keeping this section updated as you continue learning new things is necessary.
6. ADD YOUR CURRENT JOB IF ITS MISSING
When you ditched your last job, it probably didn’t occur to you to add your new job ASAP. If your last role on your resume still says “current”, you’ll need to insert the end month and year and add your present position.
If you don’t have any major accomplishments just yet, that’s okay. You can enter an overview of your role and a few bullets that highlight what your accountabilities are. If a few jobs are missing you’ll need to add them as well as start and end dates, too.
7. SWITCH UP THE DESIGN
Is your font Times New Roman?
Are there no borders or color on the document at all?
Is there no shading and shadows to make the page “pop”?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it’s time for a design refresh. Back in the day a plain black and white, no-frills resume was the standard. But now colors and simple design elements are needed to make the document more aesthetically appealing.
You can add borders, lines, shading, shapes, and use different font styles to make your resume stand out from the stack of competing applicants. Exceptions to this include government and legal resumes.
8. ADD NEW ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Did you save the company thousands of dollars?
Were you recognized for something outstanding?
Did you take the initiative on launching or optimizing processes?
Are you accountable for bringing in thousands of dollars in revenue and sales?
That needs to be on your resume! Any awards, major wins, successes, accomplishments, and recognition needs to be added to your resume. You should be keeping a “brag file” on yourself at all times.
Include quarterly reviews, feedback and testimonials from coworkers, and data and numbers that back up the results of your efforts. We recommended adding new accomplishments quarterly to stay on track.
9. STILL HAVE AN OBJECTIVE? SWAP IT OUT WITH A PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY
Objective statements used to be the perfect opening to a professionally crafted resume. In today’s day in age though, recruiters don’t want to see them.
If your resume still begins with an objective statement, it’s time to swap it out with a value-based professional summary. Learn all about why objective statements make recruiter and hiring managers cringe by watching our video.
Your professional summary should include your years of experience, career highlights, successes, and give an overview of your background that corroborates your expertise. It should be no more than 5 bullet points or sentences.
10. SCAN FOR TYPOS AND ERRORS
The quickest way to turn a recruiter off when reading your resume is by having typos and errors. Read your resume aloud, send it to a professional resume writer for feedback, or use spellcheck and Grammarly to make sure there are no misspellings, grammatical errors, or other blunders that could ruin your chances of landing an interview.
IT DOESN'T TAKE LONG TO UPDATE YOUR RESUME
This list may seem long, but updating your resume is as easy as 1-2-3. Each step listed above can take a couple of minutes or less.
While your calendar may be full of virtual meetings, focusing on planning your Q1 goals, and others, surely you can take some time to keep your greatest career asset up to date and current in case something - good or bad - happens.
If you absolutely don’t have the time or energy to update your resume yourself, you can reach out to the Thompson Resume Writing Team or one of the many resume writing professionals on this list.