Job Search Tip 3

Why a tip so soon, when you said it was going to be an occasional series, you ask?

Why not, I ask in return.

Tip 3: Keep a resume always ready

I know this sounds too obvious to say, but quite a few high performing A players in organizations when asked by a recruiter if they are interested in that "one great opening" usually fall when they say "Yes, but.... I don't have a resume ready yet"

"OK, send it to me tomorrow, first thing in the morning", says the recruiter conveying a sense of urgency, and we know underneath it all, he/she is gasping in horror, knowing that will never happen (yes, that's one of the rules of the job search....it has been written so from time immemorial ;-)

But I digress.

The aforementioned high performing A player will resolve to do so, but fighting the competition in the sales dust of interior India or haggling with nefarious vendors in the metro office or wrestling with indecipherable user requirements as they design architecture and code, means the resolve will usually find outlet around the same time I am composing this blog post (1:07 am, for those of you who are interested) and the resume will be as disjointed and difficult to read as this post.

So the lesson, is always keep a resume ready. Store it in your webmail account. Or if you are as tech savvy as I think, then you could use cool things like Google Documents. Or any of those other snazzy virtual drives that you get in the vast corners of the web.

That's the easy part.

The difficult thing is to keep the resume updated.

Add in your achievements as you vanquish the competition and achieve huge benefits for your company. Write not in story-telling detail but enough to convey your skills and achievements.

Keep pruning the length of the resume occasionally. Don't let it grow like a wild forest. I know, like the hero of an ancient epic you probably feel that all your deeds are worth telling. But trust me, 'tis not so. Prune away at the description of those things you did many moons and seasons ago. Alas, their relevance is not so much a reflection of your skills today.

Here's tip 1 and tip 2