Resume & LinkedIn: Smart Habits & Practical Skills

Principais ideias

• Update your resume in small, regular sessions tied to a moment you already have, such as payday, instead of rebuilding it in a panic.
• Capture each win in one phone note on the day it happens, while the details and the numbers are still fresh in your mind.
• Make the good actions easy and the time-wasting ones harder: pin the resume file, and keep LinkedIn to a short weekly visit with a timer.
• Keep a family proud list with a page for each person, and on report day everyone, you first, adds two dated lines about the term.
• When a habit slips, restart at the next cue with the smallest version of the routine rather than trying to catch up on everything.

Dentro deste bit

1. Why resumes go stale between job hunts

   Most people update their resume, the one- or two-page summary of their work, only when they suddenly need it: a rumour of job cuts, a friend's lead, a move to a new city. By then the details of the last two years have faded.

2. Catching wins the moment they happen

   The smallest habit in this book is also the most valuable. Keep one note on your phone called wins, and add a line whenever something goes well at work: a thank-you message, a problem you fixed, a target you hit, a new task you were trusted with.

3. The payday resume update

   Captured wins still need a home. Once a month, move them from the phone note into a master resume, a longer private version that holds everything and from which you later cut shorter versions for each application.

4. A LinkedIn routine that fits a tea break

   LinkedIn, the professional networking site where your profile works as a public version of your resume, rewards small regular visits more than occasional bursts. A weekly routine of ten minutes, attached to a cue such as Sunday afternoon tea, covers most of what a busy parent needs.

5. The family proud list

   Children do not need a professional profile to learn this habit; they need a simpler form of it. Keep a family notebook with one page for each person, including you, called the proud list.

6. Tracking, slipping and starting again

   Tracking keeps a habit visible. A habit tracker is simply a way of marking each time you do the routine: a tick on the kitchen calendar for the payday update, a new line in the wins note, a star at the top of each child's proud-list page for every term.