Why master resumes are such a good idea

One of the big differences between CVs and resumes is that CVs are expected to be a complete documentation of everything you’ve ever done in academia, while resumes are expected to be a carefully selected and shaped collection of the relevant bits of your work history.

That’s not to say that recruiters or hiring managers won’t look askance at a resume that has obvious and unexplained holes in that history, but it is to say that I’ve seen perfectly good 25-page CVs, and if your resume goes over two, well, there’s probably a problem.

External memory is your friend

One of the great things about the CV is that it serves as a kind of external memory, capturing every conference presentation, publication, and course you’ve ever done time with. Many academics build “update CV” into their end-of-semester routines, because it helps keeps everything tidy for the promotion files.

And really, thank heavens for external memories, because without them I certainly wouldn’t remember that I once gave a conference presentation on John Steinbeck. (I would still be asking myself WHY I did such a thing, but that’s another story.)

When people use resumes instead of CVs, however, that external memory gets lost. People tend to update the last one they used, which means that they’re restricted to whatever selective information they included last time they applied for jobs. That’s great if they’re applying to the next job up the career ladder, but it shoots them in the foot if they’re trying to change careers.

Starting anew requires you to think outside your box

Whenever we’ve been in a career for a while, our assumptions about “what counts” get shaped by that career. I’ve seen a lot of academics write resumes that include a publication section but leave out that office job they did the summer between the MA and the PhD. There are very few jobs out there that care about your publications, but they very much might care that you spent your internship semester creating a database from scratch.

In order to think outside of those assumptions, we’ve got to get everything on the table. And that’s where the Master Resume comes in.

What is a master resume, anyway?

A master resume is like the CV of the non-academic world. It’s a resume that includes absolutely every job you’ve ever held and all the things you did and accomplishments you achieved in that job, whether you think right now they’ll be relevant or not. It includes all your volunteer gigs. It includes all your training. And it puts it in the format of a resume.

Your master resume is likely to be long — much longer than anything you’ll send out. But that’s okay. It isn’t designed to be something you send out. It’s designed to be the raw material you draw from when it’s time to write a resume for a particular job or career.

When everything is set out there in black and white, it’s much easier to recognize that you’ve got some relevant skills and experiences. And it’s also easier to pull the pieces together to make the argument that you’ve got something to offer your prospective employer.

A step by step guide to writing a master resume

Writing a master resume isn’t hard, but it can be time-consuming, so give your self plenty of space.

• Start by writing down every job you’ve ever been paid for, from the 14-year-old bus-boy job or babysitting practice on up. Include every academic gig you’ve ever done.
• For each of them, write down where you did it (geographic location), the dates you held that job, your official job title, and the company’s name.
• For each of them, write down everything you did, everything you accomplished, and everything that told you you had done a good job. (Did the boss want to promote you? Did you get asked to do things outside your official job description?)
• Go back and add numbers as much as possible in your lists of what you did. How many people did you do payroll for? How much money were you responsible for bringing in when you worked retail? How many people did you supervise?
• Write down all of your volunteer and service work, including conferences you put on or managed, events you threw, etc.
• Write down the location, dates, and titles of anything in that list.
• Write down everything you did, everything you accomplished, and everything that told you you had done well.
• Write down every award you’ve gotten from college on up.
• Write down every school you attended, the degrees you earned, and the dates you earned them. (Don’t bother with high school.)
• Type all of this up in a basic resume format.
• Ask a curious and close-reading friend to read it over and ask you questions that might pull out more details.

Once you’ve used this master resume to write the targeted resume and cover letter that gets you in the door of a new job, come back and update it! Put a note in your calendar to update it quarterly, because in many jobs, your duties and your accomplishments will change rapidly, and you don’t want to lose anything.

Master resumes in short

Basically, master resumes are the foundation upon which any good job search stands, because they collect all of the bits of information you might be able to use to make a case for yourself — and you want your case to be as strong as possible.

So it’s worth starting there and creating a really comprehensive document for yourself. You never know when working as a temp in an insurance company will come in handy.