PRos in Training

This is a guest post from Leona Laurie, PR/Marketing consultant, graduate student and blogger.

I see resumes as being living documents, and I treat them as one part of a trio: resumes, cover letters and interviews. I tweak my cover letter and resume for every position I apply for, and I update my resume every three-to-six months as a matter of course.

Putting together a custom resume can be very time consuming if you’re applying for more than one or two jobs, but if you have an exhaustive master resume that covers every position you’ve ever held (including every measurable result, every duty you were responsible for, every computer program or machine you used, and how much you were paid), it’s easy to cut and paste the most relevant things into a shiny, new document.

The complementary tool I use with my master resume is what I call a “spiritual resume.” In a separate document, I have a history of all the qualities I expressed at each job, the things I learned and contributed, the relationships that helped me grow, and the principles I grasped. In addition to being a psychologically valuable exercise (affirming the fact that even the worst job has some value), creating a spiritual resume leaves you with a document you can use as a resource when writing cover letters and preparing for interviews.

Imagine a scenario in which you’re applying for a job you really want, doing a task you’re very capable of doing, but in an industry you’ve never worked in before. If you’re tailoring your resume to the position, you’ll be able to highlight the jobs you’ve held in the past that demanded similar skills. With your spiritual resume, you’ll be able to easily recall moments in which you tackled other transitions or learning new things or being adaptable, and you’ll be able to refer to them casually in your cover letter. What’s more, when you make it to the interview (because how could you not?), you’ll be ready with solid, positive answers for tricky questions about prior working relationships and your decisions to leave other jobs.

To build a spiritual resume of your own, I suggest starting with your master resume. Once you have written or typed up every job, volunteer position, internship, etc. you’ve ever held and mined your memory for every detail about what you did at each of them, get out a fresh piece of paper and address each position in the order they appear on the master document.

For example, my actual resume says that in the year 2000 I was a print shop coordinator who managed inventory, acted as liaison to outside vendors, streamlined intra- and inter-departmental systems, supervised other employees, used a Macintosh computer and the Adobe design suite to do graphic design, and produced printing and bindery projects for clients in a timely manner. My spiritual resume focuses on the relationships I built with my colleagues using the things I learned that year from Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It makes note of the fact that I improved the delivery time for projects, increased the department’s productivity, figured out that my boss was too busy to act on my first request for something—but always gave me what I needed if I was confident enough to remind him, and that I struggled with not being taken seriously because of my age.

The success I had in relationship building was especially notable because of this last point, as I’d been hired into a position above a couple of people who were more than twice my age—one of whom was my uncle—and I’d replaced a well-liked woman who was let go rather abruptly. When asked by future hiring managers about how I would be able to cope with working with people who might not be thrilled to have me coming in to shake things up for the sake of image revitalization or improving efficiency, I’ll be able to easily recall the details of how Dale Carnegie got me through a situation like that when I was only 23.

It isn’t difficult to stand out from the crowd when applying for a job. All you have to do is combine your knowledge of the company you’re hoping to join with your knowledge of your own strengths and communicate to the hiring manager how the two fit together. Keeping a complete record of everything you’ve done and how it helped you grow will allow you to focus on the best parts of what you have to offer, and your positive tone and ability to draw connections is sure to make a good impression.

To contact Leona, email l.ementary(at)yahoo(dot)com