Maintain a Career File for Quick Reference.

Unfortunately, the majority of my clients don’t have a career file that has vital career information. With the economic climate changing daily, it is more important than ever to be prepared. When clients come to me, it often can takes days or even weeks to locate all the necessary information needed to develop a great resume and cover letter. Reducing the time you waste looking for and becoming prepared is a smart defense and might give you the jump on a great career opportunity.

What should you include in your career file?

Ø Career Portfolio: Keep a file containing your most recent resume, cover letter, contacts and reference sheet, and related addendums.
Ø Training: Training or assessments that you have completed through your company should be saved. Also, training you have sought outside of work or formal education you’ve completed before and during your career should be saved here too. Keep copies of transcripts, certificates of completion or graduation diplomas, again, all in a file.
Ø Annual Reviews: Every time you go through the review process at work, make and save copies of all documents and keep them in a file.
Ø Special Recognition: Anything you have received as an employee in terms of awards, achievements, promotion, bonuses or other forms of recognition for work or service should be kept in a file.
Ø Work Completed: This may be the most important item to keep track of. When you’ve completed a special assignment, made a big sale, expanded the market, launched a new product, finished editing an important piece of work, worked with a top visiting specialty physician or some specific achievement you were part of; jot it down and drop it in a file.

Make sure to include the job title at the time, date, important event or challenge you took on, what happened, who was involved, how long did it take, and the results. Gather as much quantitative facts as you need, such as budget amount, revenue dollars generated, amount of costs saved or percentage of gain or expansion. The more details the better.

This will help with details in your future resume development, interview preparation and even salary negotiations. Sometimes when you leave a company, records are sealed and you can’t get to important figures. Even though an event seems unforgettable at the time, a few years down the road details get fuzzy and it is much easier to have an accurate record of those special moments already on file.

Whether you have a file for each job, files for different information or yearly folders is up to you. The important thing is that your information is all together in one spot for easy retrieval. Start it today!!