Resumes: Be Prepared for the Next Opportunity

Be Prepared for the Next Opportunity

Nothing beats the facts when asked to provide input for your performance evaluation, justification for a position upgrade, or your stellar qualifications for a promotion. Since performance and experience data is hard to locate quickly, do what savvy professionals do to prepare for any career-related opportunity:

Establish and maintain an annual file of your work goals and accomplishments.
Retain letters, memos, and e-mails that describe your performance.
Make notes of organizational and economic factors that made it difficult to reach your goals, whether you achieved them or not.
Keep all your personal business correspondence that involves your performance, objectives, and justifications.
Detail in writing descriptions of the organization, your department, the budget, and span of control.
Locate copies of publications you author, publications that quote you or mention your performance, or speeches you've delivered.
Retain information from positions and contributions made to professional and community associations and organizations.
Indicate your performance rankings and standings nationally, regionally, or locally.
Use the information to write a current experience and accomplishment statement annually that demonstrates the scope of your position, the problems you encountered, how you solved them, and the results.
Integrate organizational and economic factors into your text, such as: Achieved 110% of goals despite organization filing for Chapter 11.

Build a file to get your where you want to go. Happy holidays!