Berks & Beyond Blog

Keeping your résumé current is important to your continued career development.  But unless you’re actively looking for a job, the daily demands of life, home and work can easily push this updating process down on your priority list.  If you haven’t reviewed your résumé in over a year, here are just a few good reasons why you should take a fresh look at it:

• Even if you’re currently employed, you never know when an attractive job opening may present itself.  A current résumé can help you capitalize on an unexpected opportunity – before someone else has the chance.
• Over time, your important achievements and contributions may be forgotten.  Regular updating ensures that critical, measurable accomplishments are accurately recorded.
• In many cases, your résumé creates a first and lasting impression on a potential employer.  Make sure it’s a good one.  By periodically reviewing and honing your résumé, you can create a more powerful marketing tool that accurately and favorably represents you as a professional.

Use these tips to make your résumé update simple and comprehensive:

1. Review personal information (address, e-mail, LinkedIn URL, etc.) to ensure everything is up-to-date.
2. Review your oldest job.  If it’s no longer relevant, and you have at least 10 years of documented work history without it, remove it.
3. Update your responsibilities and accomplishments.  Consider the following:  special projects; new expertise developed or job responsibilities awarded; knowledge or skills enhancement from special training or professional development; awards or other recognition; challenges you faced and solutions developed; measurable results you helped achieved (e.g., eliminating process inefficiencies, increasing productivity or sales, improving staffing or operational performance, etc.).
4. Revist your objective statement.  If it is not in line with your current career aspirations, rewrite it.  The statement can be general, but should show some direction toward the field in which you want to work.
5. Reevaluate your references.  Verify that these individuals still work where you have noted and that contact information for each is correct.  If you have developed new contacts who can attest to your recent achievements or heightened responsibility, consider replacing them with outdated references.
6. Update your résumé format.  Check online sample résumés to see if yours looks outdated and revise accordingly.  Additionally, you should create an electronic version of your résumé if you don’t already have one.
7. Proofread everything.  Sloppy spelling, grammar and punctuation may take you out of the running immediately.  If you’re not proficient in proofreading, ask a trusted friend or associate to help.

Looking for a better career opportunity in Southern or Central Pennsylvania?  Contact a Berks & Beyond Recruiter.  We have a wide variety of temporary and direct hire opportunities in the office/clerical, light industrial, accounting / finance, engineering, human resources, management, agricultural and skilled trades sectors.

You’ve spent a lot of time developing a great-looking résumé and crafting a fantastic cover letter.  But, how do you make sure they don’t wind up looking like a mess when you send them electronically?

The American Staffing Association recommends the following steps for converting your cover letter and résumé from Word or WordPerfect documents into electronic ones:

1. Remove all formatting.  This includes lines, rules, boxes, bold, italics, and underlining. 
2. Standardize your font.  Change the font to Courier, size 12.
3. Change your margins.  Convert your page margins to 1 inch on the left and 3 inches on the right.
4. Save as a .txt file.  When you save the cover letter or résumé, choose “Save As” and change the type to “Text only with Line Breaks.”  A warning box may come up informing you that you might lose some formatting.  Click “OK” or “Yes.”
5. Reformat your résumé.  Launch Notepad (PC) or SimpleText (Mac) to reformat and clean up your résumé and cover letter. Move all centered items to the left margin, and make sure all text is flush left.  As you scroll through your documents, remove all Tabs, replace all bullets with asterisks (*), and change bolded words to all caps.  Increase white space by hitting Return twice between sections.
6. Make sure your cover letter and résumé are e-friendly.  Do not send them as attachments, but, rather, pasted in the body of the e-mail whenever possible.
7. Check before sending.  Practice sending them via e-mail to yourself as well as a friend who uses a different Internet service provider—to ensure the documents are clean and professional-looking.  Once you’ve made any required adjustments, your cover letter and résumé are ready for a prospective employer’s inspection.
8. Include keywords in your résumé.  Recruiters use keywords to search for résumés.  So choose some of the basic, important keywords in your field and pepper them throughout your résumé.  For example: web designer, account manager, communications specialist, to name some.

Need More Job Seeking Advice?

As one of Southern and Central Pennsylvania’s largest staffing companies, we at Berks & Beyond are always available to answer your employment-related questions.