Spring Cleaning Your Resume

Spring cleaning allows you to deep-clean your home and get rid of clutter. Spring is also a good time to look over other items in your life that might need some de-cluttering, like your resume. While you should go over your resume at least once every quarter to consider what you have accomplished and what skills you can add. At least once a year you should go a bit deeper to make sure that your resume really shows you at your best. Whether you are on the job hunt or you already have a job, now is the time to rethink your resume. Here are three things you should do improve your resume:

Clear Out Jobs That Aren’t Relevant Anymore

When you are looking at your list of jobs, you need to ask yourself the following question: Are they all relevant? If you have a three-page list of jobs on your resume, you may want to get rid of some of the older ones to make the list more updated and accessible. Of course, you don’t want to leave job gaps; don’t touch jobs in the middle of your resume, even if they may seem a bit out of place. Instead, look at the jobs at the bottom of your list. In most circumstances, there is no reason to list that fast-food job you had when you were 17, or that retail job you followed it up with. The first job that you list should be relevant to what you are currently looking for.

Read Through Skills to Add (and Subtract) What is Needed

When you do some “spring cleaning” on your resume, you want to take a close look at the skills that you have listed. While there isn’t a limit to the number of skill points you can have on your resume, they should be relevant to the exact job you are looking for. Whether you are placing points under specific jobs or you are placing them on a list at the end of the resume, they should clearly show hiring managers that you have what is needed for a job. If you have gained new skills throughout the year, make sure that you put them on there. On the other hand, if you feel like your resume is weighed down by having too many points, it’s okay to take out the ones that just aren’t relevant anymore. If, for example, you are applying for a marketing job, the fact that you know how to use a deep fryer is not relevant to your search.

Consider a More “Modern” Look For Your Resume

Are you still using the same resume layout you had ten years ago? It might be time to update the look and try something new. There are dozens of new resume templates added online every year. The layout should be sleek, modern, and (very) easy to read. Sometimes it’s the little things that can get the eye of a hiring manager; a well-designed resume is one of those things.