Taking Stock of 2009
As 2010 starts, many ponder what is in store for this new year. One of the most useful things I have learned over the years is to take a short break at the beginning of the new year and take stock of what I learned ( personally and as a team) and accomplished in the LAST year.
Normally I start by catching up on updating project status, billing clients and preparing for the tax season in the U.S. Then I do a brief assessment of what projects were completed, how successful they were and what I learned from them.
Another item NOT on most people’s radar is I usually do a scrub of my resume, my website, etc. I do a search of various patent websites to see if any new patents have issued, search for publication or additional references for articles I have written and also update my copyright statements on the website and so forth. Even though I’m not looking for another job, I find that updating the resume is a good thing to do.
In my younger years, I updated my resume only when preparing for a new job. But since I usually stayed with a company for 5 – 10 years, it was difficult to remember all the projects accomplished and skills learned. I find that updating the resume yearly is an excellent timeframe, because enough time has passed to find accomplishments and gain some perspective.
When I add these things to my resume, I am creating a meta-resume, because I add items and then don’t worry about polishing it too much. The key accomplishments and skills are added and so the resume “swells” a bit. When it is time for a “new” resume, I take a few minutes and polish it. Some of the additional text will go away, perhaps it isn’t important to the new client or job. This makes it very easy to have an updated resume with all the facts in place, never too far out of date.
Another item to update is what training courses you may have taken over the last year. Several years down the road you will have difficulty remembering how many hours or days of training you had, and what the course was about. Although most of this will never end up on your resume, a training file is a good thing to maintain.
This is a good way to kick off the new year, and add to your success in 2010!
-- Matt Glei, www.KnowHowConsulting.biz
