Keep your Resume Current

Even if you’re not actively seeking a new job, keeping your resume up-to-date is important. Regardless of your job-seeking status, your resume should be no longer than six months old at any time. 

Having a current resume is mandatory if you’re job hunting, and it’s good to have one handy if you find out about an unexpected job opportunity. If you’re already employed, making sure your boss or hiring manager has a current copy of your resume demonstrates that you’re working to improve your professional skills.

When should you update your resume? Use this checklist as a general guide.

• Any time you gain a new professional skill
• Any time you gain a new qualification that is relevant to your career
• If you are changing your job focus, your resume should be updated to reflect that
• Update it before you need it. If you anticipate layoffs in your company or feel dissatisfied with your current job, updating your resume will help you get to grips with your current skills and strengths, and you’ll be better prepared if you do start hunting for a new job.

Updating should not only include adding new skills or jobs to reflect your current situation. Keeping your resume up-to-date also means removing any entries that are no longer relevant. As a general rule, the work history section of your resume should not include entries that are more than fifteen years old, unless they are related to any special skills or accomplishments that you want to emphasize.

In addition, any professional skills or strengths that are no longer relevant to your career should be removed, too. Don’t be tempted to keep irrelevant entries in your resume simply for the purpose of padding your skills list. Anything that is not relevant is unlikely to help you get an interview, meaning that you’ve wasted space that could have been used for skills that employers are more interested in.

If you update your resume regularly, you probably won’t need to do much more than add and remove a few entries. However if it’s been several years or longer since your last update, you’ll probably have more work to do—you may need to rewrite your entire resume to reflect a new career focus, change the format of your resume, or update a resume with an out-dated design to give it a new and fresh look.

Also, please review our Resume Writing section for resume examples, tips and tools.  If you need more help, please consider using a Career Counselor.