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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Career Tools.
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This is Sarah and I'm Mark.
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Today's podcast, Systematic Career Documentation, Part 2 of 2.
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As always, our content has been crafted by humans and we are now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are what do I need to keep track of during my career? Why do I need to keep track of details during my career? And how do I use career details to create an effective resume?
- [00:31]
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If you want answers, answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Getting promoted isn't just about results. It's about being seen as someone who can lead. The effective manager conference for Manager Tools teaches you the exact behaviors that produce results and retain teams. So when that leadership opportunity opens up, you're already ready. There are in person and virtual options available. Visit us at manager-tools.com emc for all of our effective manager options. Okay, so that's then the first part. Then it comes to the. The maintenance. And this is where we start looking for accomplishments monthly. And folks, anyone who's ever had to create a resume on short notice, and I'm sure that's you, knows that it's incredibly difficult to create a good resume fast. And we not only want to be able to create a resume and at short notice, but we want it to be a resume at short notice that is of the highest quality we can produce. Think of it this way, folks. The amount of work required to fix a broken process is so much bigger than the little work required to maintain it all along the way. And that is the reason for our guidance here. Now, really, it's to carry out what amount to two actions, one of which you're only going to have to do once, and the other which will take about 15 minutes a month.
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15 minutes a month.
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Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
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That's a big deal because of the CMD, because the CMD exists and that
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15 minutes a month is going to allow you to maintain your career documentation systematically and increase the probability of you being able to create a quality resume at short notice whenever you need it.
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Yeah, look, if you're currently in a spot where you can edit your work email and calendar, we have two things for you to do right now. Don't do this if you're driving to work. I actually got told a story. I just got back. Sarah, you just got back from. You were in St. Louis and also Philly for a public conference. I was in Jacksonville for Norley Group, who I'm on the board of, and we were talking about distracted driving. That happened to be the safety moment. This is a construction, electrical contracting Firm. And the safety moment was about distracted driving. And two or three board members got in a car to drive to dinner. It's like 6 o', clock, 6:30 at night. And somebody said my blood ran cold when they were talking about distracted driving. I have a friend who ran into a sign that said don't text while driving. And they were texting when they ran
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into no, but they're okay.
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It was a low speed. It was 20 miles an hour. It was fine.
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I thought you were gonna say they were decapitated.
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I was like, oh my God. Oh no. This is horrible.
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It's gone terribly.
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This is forever. This cast will forever be known as the decapitation. I know.
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And that folks, is what happens when you listen to too much true crime. You immediately.
- [03:42]
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Decapitation. Decapitation. Yes, Monsieur Guillotine. So again, if you're in a spot right now where you can do that, we have two things for you do right now, okay? And maybe do a voice memo on your phone so that you can remember to do this. Okay? First, make a folder or a label in your email client and call it cmd. Then go into your calendar and make a calendar appointment for 15 minutes recurring monthly, also called CMD. If you're worried that you won't remember, put career management document. And then you'll remember the Decapitation podcast.
- [04:20]
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And also one last pro tip there. If your folders or labels, depending on what email client you use, fall into alphabetical order, I would put an symbol
- [04:31]
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in front of it so it's a top.
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Yeah, suck it up to the top. So it's always alphabetized before the other things and then that way, folks, once you have this folder created, if you will, each time you get an email from your boss with a well done or a note from a customer saying thank you or a woohoo from a peer, put a copy of that email into your CMD folder or label. And folks, you may be of the school of thought that the search function in your email is is sufficiently advanced and that you can find a single email later. And therefore you don't need a folder. Search is not enough to be clear, create it anyway. Having the folder there visible daily again sucked up to the top will remind you to put emails in it and thus make the collection more comprehensive than a search is ever going to be. And again, don't censor yourself. It's like brainstorming more is better, even if it's just a footnote. Great job. Like just a little thing, because this, this isn't automatically Going into your cmd, we're going to later, on a quarterly basis, review what's in there and determine whether or not it should be moved over. So all the things, anything goes in there.
- [05:45]
B
You mentioned about if you think that your email search is effective, I assume that the manager tools, career tools, listening community is intelligent. And there's no intelligent person in the history of the universe who believes that their email client search is super powerful and effective. Or maybe we just have never been exposed to that email client. I mean, maybe that's true, but I've never had that.
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I don't know. I think some people know how to use the search better than I do. Has always been my assumption. Right.
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Like, well, Apple mail is horrible. I love Apple. Don't get me wrong.
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I don't know. I use Google Mail. I love Google Mail. But like there's all these filters and I never touch any of them. Like, I never like touch them. I just put it in the bar and then I'm like really mad when it doesn't give me what I want. Even though I am unwilling to fill in any of the other requirements to try and get it closer. Some people might be, they might be like gurus of the search function, which I am.
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So in other words, you never cut your front lawn, but then you're surprised when it doesn't look good?
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Kind of. I don't like the analogy, but yes, we'll say that.
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Yeah. Good. And then what happens is each time your account, monthly calendar item comes up, review the emails in that folder. Not saying that emails are the only thing. Heck, you might have a scrap of paper. Heck, if you really wanted to, you could write something down on a piece of paper, take a picture of it with your phone and drag it into that folder or email it to yourself. There's nothing wrong with that.
- [07:16]
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I was gonna say. Well, if it's not too archaic to some of our listeners, I would say keep a manila folder on your desk and throw in any thank you card or any note that you got or like any like, things like that that you might have.
- [07:30]
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Yeah. So once a month you're gonna see that CMD item on your calendar that we talked about. Review the mails in that folder, decide which ones make good accomplishments. Maybe not all of them will. That's okay. You're taking a second bite at the apple. The first time you thought this might be good and the standard should be, it might be. We don't know. Okay, the ones that are good, either forward them to a personal email address or Somehow save them to a folder, you know, Dropbox, whatever you have so that they can be used in your cmd. You have to be careful, folks. If you're going to use corporate assets, corporate systems for this and you get laid off, you, you'll have lost all of that work on your cmd. We have numerous podcasts about. It sounds bad to say how to protect yourself. Let me just say we have numerous podcasts to help you think through where your stuff should be so that you don't get caught in the awkward situation of having to give up your phone and being walked out without your laptop. And that's where all of your contact information is and your CMD and your resume.
- [08:34]
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Can you imagine losing that? That would be horrible. All right, the next step being, we need to update the actual CMD quarterly and at the end of each quarter. And again, folks, when you have time and free hands, put a reminder on your calendar so that you remember quarterly. We recommend you take these accomplishments, emails, files, papers, what have you, and add them onto the CMD itself. And you could do this monthly if you like. But it's likely that many of your projects or activities are not going to complete within a month. So that makes it a little bit harder to update the career management document with accomplishments, which are by definition finished each month. So you, you could do it each month. It. It doesn't necessarily. Although you might think it does make it faster just because it's going to be a lot of open strings. More, more open ended things that, that aren't closed. That's all.
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B
Yeah. And again, same guidance here. Don't be tempted to censor yourself or decide to leave some off of your CMD because they seem less important than others. You don't know about the job you're going to be asked to be considered for. You don't know about a job that's maybe in a different industry or is slightly off kilter from yours, and you may need some different background information. It's way better to have more than to suddenly realize my resume is not going to be that good because I didn't think I needed that kind of stuff. Okay, it could be that a minor accomplishment or a project is the one that demonstrates a particular skill that's essential for that next role. It may not be something you've done 20 times, but it only takes one really good accomplishment for that skill for the interviewer to say, I really like her. And boy, she killed it. On this one particular thing with where we had to set up an archival system with A write once, read many, drive or some crazy something like that and you've done it. Just keep in mind your CMD can be as long as it needs to be. It can be seven pages and you might have two different jobs that you're interviewing for a year from now. And you'll have a seven page CMD and you'll come up with two separate resumes that are both a page long unless you're 65 years old and they will be 40% different than one another. They will be highlighting different things and people will be there's a book you want your buddies be like, these are both your resumes. Yeah, one's for one company, one's for another. I'm highlighting different things and I'm preparing different answers for my behavioral interview, assuming they're gonna give me one.
- [11:12]
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Most new grads walk into their first job with a degree and zero idea how professional life actually works. First job Fundamentals changes that. Teaching new professionals how to build strong relationships, deliver real results, and stand out from the very beginning of their career. Available through any career tools license. And yes, you can gift it to that grad in your area. Head to manager-tools.com licenses now what we have is through OCMD we've got a process in place for adding to it over the course of time. And now it's time to actually create a resume from our career management document. And folks, every time you need your up to date resume, you can now go back to your career management document and create a new resume from it. All you do is look at the job description that you're applying to and what you know about the company, the industry, the environment, and then pare down each responsibility paragraph and bulleted list of accomplishments on your CMD until you have a one page resume. Now, remembering back to our our guidance earlier about being overly explanatory, remember to remove any of your comments. You may even want to if there are extra pieces that you know are only added to an accomplishment bullet, for example, because you need them to remember, you might want to highlight them in a different color just to kind of like make them stand out to you as like this is additional explanation material. Carefully review all the spelling, the punctuation and the grammar and it can be easy for errors to creep in when you're making a lot of changes. So again, review well and have a second set of eyes. You might feel like you don't need a second set of eyes given the amount of prep that went in, but it never hurts to send it to A friend to send it. Totally agree, Mark and Sarah. And have us review it real quick. Never hurts.
- [13:15]
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We do it all the time. And we want to make this part very clear. We're suggesting you create a new resume for each job you're applying to. Some of you might be wondering what we're talking about because you only have one resume. And folks, that's the wrong way to go about creating a resume. Instead of using the same one for every application you make, you need to tailor your resume to the applications. Okay, we talk about this all the time. Suppose you're interviewing, you're a sales rep, and you can either become a senior sales rep or you can become a junior sales manager. Do you expect to get the same type of questions? No. Or let's even go further upstream than that. The purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. If you know that two jobs are 20% different and you know that in your cmd you have stuff that's on both sides of the aisle and you have too much as it is, why wouldn't you choose the things for the sales assistant job that's different than the. Or the assistant sales manager job rather than the senior salesperson? You would. By definition, you would. You talk more about administration and internal relationships and. And who knows, attending some training on management. Whereas for the senior sales job, you might talk about the sales records you set and the awards you got and the big client that you increased the revenue from and new clients you brought in. Right. There would be two different sets, all of that. Both sets of those things would be on your cmd, and you'd pick one theme coming out of it for one and a different theme for the other one. And if your CMD has everything you ever did on it, it's easy to use that as a basis for your resume. And what you're doing is essentially taking out everything that isn't relevant. That's the way I would do it. And I would probably do it in a couple of steps. Like, if I had three pages, I'd probably cut some stuff, but I'd be lightly cutting and I would end up with two pages. And then I would do another cut and put a page and a half. And then finally I'd be like, okay, I've been thinking about this long enough. Now I know which ones I really want on there, which accomplishments, which responsibilities, and so on to get it down to one page. And look, it's much easier to do this than to start from a basic resume and then add more relevant things. Not Only because you have to remember what they are, but because you're now having to write parts of your resume under a deadline and that invariably is going to lead to sloppy work. And if I get a resume with a couple errors in it, unless it's a close personal friend of mine, I don't action it.
- [15:55]
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Yep, that sounds right. And folks, if you're wondering what to include, go through the requirements of the role and include any responsibilities and accomplishments that you can tell are directly applicable. And then think about the wider environment. Like, for example, if the company's likely to be in cost cutting mode, include any accomplishments that you have that have something to do with cost cutting. If they're exploring outsourcing and you have experience in outsourcing, include that. Just kind of thematically look for what they might be looking for, whether it's their company or their industry or just generally the general economy, and kind of make some decisions.
- [16:36]
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Yeah, I also think, you know, if you're listening to this, you're probably seeing this process is fairly manual. But we're not saying don't use AI. Absolutely, you can use AI. You can certainly use AI to go out and research about the company and, and the job. And you can find out how that job that you're applying for is different than yours. And you can feed it your resume and say, hey, what would you think about this resume? Was it good here? Was it good here? Does it have enough of this? Does it have enough of that? And you can have a conversation with your AI, whatever your AI provider is, or an AI bottle, and do a great deal of stuff. I just wrote things we think. We think for next week. It's Friday. We just got home after a week on the road, and one of the things I said was somebody asked me a question today about a senior executive pay package. And I've always sort of been surprised by that because I keep getting reminded of the fact people don't know if you're a senior person at a, at a publicly traded company every year they are legally obligated to disclose the pay of all the senior people if there's a significant pay package. And I'm not just talking about CEO and CEO. I'm talking about the top 20 people in the company. And this person was being considered for a top 20 level job. I'm like, it used to be you had to go to a bunch of companies and download their 10K and it's, it's 50 pages long and it's only an appendix, Delta or Golf or Zulu that it Says here are some comments regarding senior executive compensation. By the way, that didn't used to be true 50 years ago, but the laws have changed because we want a little bit more transparency. Well, you don't even have to go to the websites anymore.
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Yeah, exactly. Just ask Claude, he'll tell you.
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Right. You know, go out and find for this job. Go look at the 10Ks for the top 500 or thousand companies in the United States or Europe or whatever and, and tell me what the pay packages are for these people. Same thing can be true here. You can use your AI agent to do that. So in addition to what Sarah was just saying, you must include at least one accomplishment, and obviously preferably more, which demonstrates you can successfully carry out the core as you understand it of this new role. And again, I think I would ask my AI helper to look into that for me and think about it for me. Not that they really think. We've seen hundreds of resumes for project managers which didn't include the rubric of on time, on budget, in scope. You know, we've seen software developers who didn't include their delivery of acceptable code on time, which met requirements and maybe had low impact on QA. We've seen CEOs who forgot to include the increased shareholder value or delivered profit. I mean, these seem glaring and I
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think that's why people forget them. Right? I think they're an assumption.
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Yeah, they're so. They're so obvious. Right?
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So obvious.
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Exactly. And as a general rule, what we recommend is the first bullet for every job you have in your list of accomplishments underneath. That job needs to be related to the most important responsibility of that job. It's the one that demonstrates your ability to do what you're paid to do. And if they have to get to bullet six before they see it, they may not ever get to bullet six.
- [20:01]
A
That is exactly it. And then, folks, lastly, always create your resume with one main purpose. To tell the hiring manager what it is they want to know. And folks, there's a trend, I call it a trend, but it's existed and been pervasive for so long. I'm not even sure you call that a trend anymore. But there's a trend in resumes of the candidate telling the hiring manager what the candidate wants to tell the hiring manager wants them to know. And folks, we see so many resumes with the amount of money raised for charity or boats rowed across oceans or leadership of the company baseball team, and we understand those are incredibly important to the individual that achieved them, but they're rarely relevant to the role which they're applying. And hiring managers in the moment where they're using your resume to assess whether or not they want to interview in that moment, they're not looking for well rounded individuals with outside interests or hobbies. Or hobbies. Exactly. They're not looking for that. They don't have time for that right now. That could be part of the interview, but definitely not the resume. So first and foremost, they're looking for an individual with the skills and experience to do the job that they need to fill. So thinking about your resume from the point of view of the hiring manager and what they want to know rather than what you want to tell them will increase the effectiveness of your resume dramatically.
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B
Yeah, sorry. I'll let you summarize because I want to take a little aside here. You know, Sarah, you mentioned having people who are hearing this to send us their resume. I'll tell you two very brief stories. We've been doing this for 21 years now. Nearly 21 years. And I. I mean, how many people have listened to us? 100 million people maybe have listened to us. We've been downloaded over a quarter of a billion times. And I have been saying for 20 years for people to reach out to me, stay in touch with me. I sometimes joke, tongue in cheek. I'm a pretty good guy to know, but if I can help you, I'll try to help you as best I can. Less than 20 people in our community have stayed in touch with me. Now, some people tell me the reason is because they're intimidated or they think I'm not a nice guy or whatever. I don't know how more nice you can be than to give away everything, you know, every week for free. But regardless, same thing with resumes. How many times have we said to our community, we'll be happy to take a look at your resume? We absolutely would. Oh, yeah, send your resume.
- [22:34]
A
I mean, maybe it's our recent Career Tools podcast. We've been talking a lot about resumes lately, but I'm probably reviewing one every two or three weeks, which still, folks, is. But still abysmal. Abysmally low.
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That's only 25 to 40 a year. We should be getting two or three a day.
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Yeah, no, it's. It's definitely not that.
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Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I don't know what would make you think that you wouldn't want to send it in and say, hey, if you guys can turn this around in 24 hours, I'd sure appreciate it. We want to help, guys. All of our podcasts are designed to teach you the stuff that wasn't around when we wanted it. And it seems like an incredible waste of talent, a misuse of talent, an inefficiency in the human system and the human condition that you would be good for a job, but the resume doesn't get you the interview. Or your resume is good, but then you can't interview well. That's just a waste, right? They're necessary systems. We can't interview everybody, so if we can help, we will.
- [23:37]
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Absolutely. So in summary, folks, having an effective resume is not just about putting some words on a page. It's about having a systematic approach to capturing information, storing it, and then being able to use it when it really matters. Like many things, this activity responds well to the little and often approach. By following the guidance in today's cast, you'll be able to leverage minimal work into an effective representation of your career.
- [24:08]
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That was great.
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That was really great. Thank you, Mark.
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Thank you, Sarah.
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Thank you so much, folks. We hope this one helped you. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars.
- [24:24]
B
Five stars only. Please.