How Often Should You Update Your Résumé?

Neglecting to keep your résumé and social profiles updated is a common mistake. After all, if you have a job or a steady series of contracting gigs, why bother with tweaking your résumé to reflect your evolving skills and responsibilities? It’s not as if you’re looking for a job at the moment. Nonetheless, keeping your résumé and profiles updated covers your flanks in a handful of ways:

• In the event of an unexpected job loss, it means you can immediately start hunting for a new position.

• It makes you look like even more of an awesome candidate to recruiters and prospective employers who might be lurking around the Internet.

• It keeps colleagues appraised of your skills, which is particularly useful if you’re the type who takes on freelancing work on a regular basis.

Some tech pros update their résumés and profiles every time they learn a new skill or accomplish something notable; done often enough, it becomes a habit. Others set a calendar date (once a quarter, say, or twice a year) to scan and adjust their materials. Whatever cadence works best for you, keeping updated will only serve you well in the long run.