The 100 day old CV or Resume is out of date

As a recruitment professional, it is always satisfying to find great candidates. However, often when you find these great candidates, the answer to “and when can I have your CV/Resume?” is most often always met with: “Well, I have an old one somewhere…”

As a professional recruiter, you also know that if you find great candidates via networking and outside the IT orientated/aware professions, that "old" will mean at least as long as they have been with their current employer; and the time scale for producing it will be never. It is hence why we accept in-house that we will write it for them from initial telephone interview notes, which when sent out to the candidate via eMail is met with a relieved eMail message, and an CV/Resume attachment with some old text insertions - because they were trying to convert the only paper copy they had into a nice MSWord version, let alone an online option!

Well, here’s a credit crunch career planning thought. The Financial Director of the company you work for probably plans his budget on quarter cycles – ie: 90days. Large publicly listed companies have to announce major changes at their quarterly reporting dates that effect balance sheets and earnings, and that includes staff issues. The FD knows the company can survive the next 90days, but beyond that could be another call. Now, if your FD and company board are making decisions on your job every 90days, shouldn’t you be?

Let us say that the FD gets to the end of the quarter, and like the good FD that he is he has some reserves. But unfortunately, there is only enough of a reserve for the company to last 180 days. If he calls in the HR director and they agree with the MD to reduce staff, that whole discussion will probably take 30days; the results of the HR directors project will be delivered in another 30days; and the planning for the announcement will take another 30days. The results can be implemented pretty quickly after that.

Good career planning is about looking forward, and writing a CV is about showing applied competencies. To make sure you note down all of your competencies, the applications of them and their and successes, keep at least a weekly diary. Note down what you did, the skills you used and the results/outcomes. What you can then do every quarter is apply these to your CV/Resume. Yes, it may look long and wordy, but chopping back and focusing is far easier and quicker that creating.

Never, ever again let your CV/Resume become more than 100days old.

Good Luck!