Career Center: Your New Year's Résumé Checkup

It’s the new year – time to dust off that résumé.  Even if you are happy with your 2010 bonus and not ready to jump ship just yet, you never know when you might get a call about a job opportunity that you simply can’t pass up.  Or maybe you have been searching for a new job for a while now, with no luck.

With recruiting departments receiving hundreds or even thousands of résumés for a single job opening, your résumé only has a 30- to 60-second window to be reviewed before it gets forwarded to the hiring attorney or ends up in the trash.  Is your résumé ready to land you an interview?

This week’s Expert Insights article, brought to you by Lateral Link, gives you advice to help you re-evaluate your résumé to make it an effective marketing tool in your job search….

Periodically update your work experience on your “master résumé.”  You should have at least two versions of your résumé: your “master résumé” and your “current résumé.”  The master résumé is a running snapshot of your career since you graduated from college or law school (depending on whether you worked prior to attending law school).  You’ll want it to be as detailed as possible, and since it’s for your eyes only, don’t worry if it’s long. 

Your current résumé is the résumé you’ll use to apply to a specific job opening.  It should be brief, relevant, and tailored to the job you’re interested in applying for.  We’ll discuss the current résumé more below.

You may be wondering why you even need a master résumé — can’t you just keep tweaking your current résumé every time you apply for a job?  The purpose of having a master résumé is so you always have an accurate and complete record of your work history, on which all the variations of your current résumé will be based.  In addition to a master résumé, corporate associates should keep a running tally of the particulars of every deal / transaction (i.e., what the deal / transaction was about and what role you played, from which you can craft a deal sheet).  If you are diligent about updating your master résumé, when you find out about an incredible job opportunity and you’re in a time crunch to submit your résumé quickly, you won’t have to waste time struggling to re-create past experiences and risk omitting important information.

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That’s why it’s good practice to spend a few minutes updating your master résumé as soon as you complete a deal or case with the type of work that was done, while the details about the matter are still fresh in your mind.  Corporate associates should also record the specifics of each completed transaction on their master deal sheet.  Later on you can pick and choose what experiences are relevant for a prospective job and put them on your current résumé and, if you’re a corporate associate, on your deal sheet.  

Don’t forget to add to your master résumé any publications you’ve authored, awards you’ve received, and professional legal organizations you’ve joined.  You will generally want to include these on your current résumé as well. If these lists get too long, however, you will need to be selective with your current résumé and only highlight the activities and achievements that are the most significant and relevant to the job you’re applying for.

For additional career development advice, visit the Associate Resources section of the Career Center.

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