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Resumes That Rock – Creating Base and Resource
Posted in: Blog by admin on September 16, 2010
If you are like the typical professional in transition you have many versions of your resume which have been tweaked to highlight your different capabilities. This is particularly true as technology advances have caused resume readers to expect your resume to be specifically targeted for their opportunity. You can save yourself extra time and work by creating a Base Resume and a Resource Resume.
These resumes are unique types of resume because you are the only one who is going to see them. The base resume contains that information that will remain the same on all versions of your resume and in essence becomes the template for all the resumes that you create. A resource resume combines all of the information that might differ from resume to resume. It combines the summaries, success stories, education and optional sections from all of your resumes into a single document that you can then select to put together for a specific opportunity.
Your contact information (resume header) obviously won’t change and your list of previous employers will remain the same. The headers for all of the sections except the optional sections won’t change either. So these become your standard Base Resume. This is the one you’ll pull up each time you craft a new resume – just be sure to save it as a different name or you’ll have to create a new Base Resume.
Your Resource Resume will contain:
1. A summary for each of your areas of expertise that highlights what you have done in that arena. There is probably some information that should be in each version of your summary, for instance, your management style or any strengths that area not expertise-specific.
2. Your success stories or SAOs (Situation, Action, Outcome) from throughout your career. You’ll probably keep adding these to your Resource Resume as you go through the interview process. In a chronological resume the SAOs go under the appropriate job heading. In a functional resume they are grouped by specialty area.
Once you’ve landed that new job it becomes a great way to track your accomplishments so they are easily available to you when performance review time rolls around again.
3. Your basic education section probably won’t change beyond whether or not you include your major, which you do only if it is relevant for the job you are being considered for. However, how much of your professional development training you include might easily vary since, again, you’ll only want to include that which is relevant to this position.
4. You should have a separate optional section for each of the areas you might want to cover. Examples of optional sections are technical skills, professional organizations, military experience, publications, patents, etc.
This Resource Resume then becomes your source of the specific items you want to include in the resume you are crafting today.