Employee Branding - why your resume is so important

Have you ever seen a job that you were interested in, or been approached about an opportunity, only to go to send your resume and realise that the last time you updated it was many years ago?

Have you ever read a job description and thought “wow, that sounds just like what I’ve been doing” and then had to re-write your resume because you had forgotten to include all of the important achievements and day to day tasks from your last role?

They say that one day the resume will be obsolete in the recruitment process. Instead, candidates will be asked a series of questions online as part of an initial screening process and then from there the recruitment and selection process will begin, without anyone ever having viewed your resume!

For now however, your resume still forms the foundation of your individual employee brand and it is still an important key to unlocking great job opportunities. So to ensure that it unlocks the right doors for you it is important that it is a Live Document!

There are lots of reasons why you shouldn’t leave your resume in some dark corner gathering dust, here are some things to think about:

Keeping up with the buzz - Buzz words and career jargon changes so quickly, so its important to ensure that your resume has the appropriate “tags” included. Ensuring that your accomplishments are listed in market relevant terms will allow recruiters and hiring managers alike to identify you for suitable opportunities.

Done and dusted - How easily we forget how much we have accomplished. Often when we finish something; a project, task, key performance indicator, we tick it off and move on to the next thing. When you finish something, make a note of it on your resume. Your resume is a useful document when it comes to your KPI review as you can use this to reference your achievements!

Correct Dates - Recruiters and hiring managers are trained to look at your resume and make sure that the dates “match up”, so make sure that you make a note of the start date and end date of your roles as trying to remember when you started and finished roles can be quite difficult!

Be a Polished Product - If you go into a shop to buy a new shirt, you expect it to be a finished product. By keeping a live resume, you ensure that your resume (which is an important part of your individual employee brand) is a finished and polished product.

Social Networking - You can now PDF your profile on LinkedIn, so if you’re not a fan of keeping a word document up to date and live, then use your LinkedIn profile to list your latest accomplishments. This also keeps your network up to date with where your skills and experience lie.

There is so much conflicting information out there about how to write a really good resume.

A really good resume contains information about an employee that is; market relevant, descriptive and true. It is presented in a neat and legible way without irrelevant or unnecessary information.

It gives a feel for the type of employee you have been in the past and gives examples of some of your greatest achievements. It is essentially you, putting your best foot forward, on paper.

So think about how you want to be perceived, think about the message you are trying to send and make sure that you keep your resume up to date, even when you’re not looking for jobs!