How to Update Your Resume?

Excerpt from Jean-Paul Vermès' Resume Guide, reprinted with the permission of Editions d'Organisation.

We've seen that the steps in preparing and designing a resume are many and time-consuming. Hence the temptation to consider it set in stone, done once and for all. And that a simple touch-up will suffice to update it. Add a new line in the "Professional Experience" section or change a few dates (age, for example).

In fact, you should repeat the same process you initially undertook. In short, review your entire career path, "reset the counters" as it's commonly said.

Indeed, the steps you have just taken, the experiences you have had, may have influenced your initial career plan. It will therefore be useful to review the list of the different steps of your previous assessment (professional but also personal assessment) to update them and specify your new ambitions and wishes for the future. Moreover, this allows you to remove or add elements that might not come spontaneously to mind but about which you could be questioned (example: stopped sports activity).

In short, like a long jumper, get back to your marks and adjust your approach based on your latest experience. Obviously, you should absolutely not simply add a line – new information is sometimes handwritten on a typed resume – to the original document! You must redo the resume, reshape it, reconfigure it.

Posted on March 25, 2008

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