What is a Master Resume and Why You Need One
So when I started my career development journey and I realized I had to get my shit together if I planned on building a career that I loved and that suited the life I wanted to have. I realized that in order to connect with my dream job I needed to be more specific in my application materials.
I’m sure we’ve all heard the advice about tailoring your resume to each job you apply to and if you were like me you've probably thought to yourself “who the heck has time to customize every single resume and cover letter they send?”
Yeah, I was just as confused too. And little lazy if I was being honest.
But then this great thing happen, I went to a career workshop and they mentioned the term master resume, and the whole time they kept using the phrase I had no idea what it was, so I asked the girl sitting next to me and what she said seriously changed my life.
She basically told me that a master resume is a resume that has all the things you’ve ever done on there and that you use that resume to customize your actual resume.
Sounds so simple but seriously why haven’t didn’t I think of doing that before?
If you’re in the same boat, I got you.
Everyone needs a master resume because who even remembers everything they did?
If you’ve ever had to guess what to add to your resume because you can’t remember the job you did 3 years ago then you need a master resume.
If you can’t remember every skill you’ve ever learned from your past job then you need a master resume,
if you’ve had jobs in different industries then you need a master resume.
Basically what i’m saying is we all need one.
Now that you know you need to jump on this train ASAP,
What should your master resume look like and how does it work?
Well, I chose to create my master resume on google docs so that I have access to it wherever I go.
The very first step I did was to list out all the major categories of my resume and I add everything I can remember on there.
So really take time to sit and brainstorm every job you’ve had in your professional life even if you don’t think you’ll ever want to include it in your current resume because you never know.
On my master's resume, I make sure to include dates and a few bullet points about each position. So essentially everything you would need to know if you wanted to add it to your current resume.
Things to include in your master resume
Past positions
Certifications
Presentations
Awards
Educational history
Relevant classes
Hard Skills
So what the difference between your master resume and your regular resume?
So basically your regular resume is usually some form of a template, with formatting to condense the information so it can be targeted to a specific position, but your master resume is more informal because the only person meant to see it is you, so essential its just a running list of everything you have done so you don’t need to think about it every time you want to apply to a new position.
Your master resume doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to be organized so you can clearly find what you want when you want to grab things from there.
So say you started to write your master resume and realize that it looking kind of sparse and you just can’t seem to think of anything else to add, what do you do?
Questions to ask if you cant think of what to add to your master resume:
What were the results of my previous positions?
What new skills have learned in the past year?
What daily task did you complete in each of your jobs?
How can you improve?
Now it is still possible that after you’ve done all your brainstorming your master resume still looking very bare, well don’t fret, this is actually a great benefit of a master resume because it allows you to see where there are gaps in your experience and what sections could use a little bit more.
Like in my example after completing my master's resume I realized I didn’t have enough experience in my field and decided to start a personal project so I could add one more experience to my professional experience section.
So use your master resume, not just as a reference but as a career guide to see where you have a lot of experience and where you could improve to take your career to the next level.
