By Megan Boone
Do you have a million different versions of your resume on your computer?
When looking to apply for an opportunity and wanting to upload your resume, it can be overwhelming to find key information or what version you need in the moment if you have several copies of different resumes.
A master resume is an exhaustive document of your full history including your educational background, accomplishments, experiences (jobs, internships, volunteering, shadowing, research, projects, etc.), skills/technology, and more.
No matter if you are developing a resume for the very first time, or mid-career looking to organize multiple versions of your resume, crafting a master resume allows not only for the organization of everything to be under one file, but also allows you the space to include everything you’ve completed and accomplished without having to omit an experience that you may want to pull from in the future.
When building out your master resume, condensing multiple versions of a resume into one, it can be helpful to organize the information intentionally. For your experiences, you may list each of your experiences under one “experience” section, but you also may choose to analyze each of your experiences and categorize them into multiple experience sections based on type/category (i.e “Clinical Experience”, “Customer Service Experience”, etc.). In the end, the goal is to have all of the information from previous versions of resumes you’ve developed into this one document.
If developing a resume for the first time, creating a master resume is a wonderful way to brainstorm all of your accomplishments and experiences without having to worry about formatting and relevancy of the experience. Remember, the goal of developing a master resume is to include your full history, it does not matter how many pages the document ends up being.
Once you’ve developed a list of all of your accomplishments, experiences, and a general list of skills/technology platforms that you’re proficient in, you’ll have everything in one document to be able to pull from when applying to specific positions.
Have an extensive list of experiences that is overwhelming to be in one document and can be categorized? Perhaps you create two separate master resumes based on the focus of your experiences (i.e. “Higher Education Master Resume” vs. “Research Resume”).
In today’s job market, it’s crucial to customize and tailor your application materials, including your resume for each position you apply to. Having the master resume will allow you to copy over the most important and relevant information for the specific position you’re applying to based on the job description. At that point, you’ll have the opportunity to play around with the order in which you have your various sections, what experiences you choose to highlight, how many bullet points you include, and specific skills that match your skill set to what’s listed on the job description.
Though it might take time to brainstorm all of your experiences, combine multiple versions of your resume into one, etc., the benefit of having one document versus several, will allow a smoother tailoring process when applying for opportunities. Especially if developing a resume for the first time, it’s impossible to make the decision of relevancy and what to list in the initial stages, making the process of building a master resume more desirable.
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Not sure where to start with brainstorming the various elements of a resume? Are you evaluating what constitutes as experience to include on a resume? Looking to combine several versions of resumes you’ve developed into one-two master documents? Book an appointment with Megan, or another member of the advising community through Handshake, or by calling the front desk at (773) 325-7431.