What you say?  You like your job?  Have no intention of leaving?  Why would I update my resume? 

Well, I too enjoy my job and the company I work for.  I’m not talking about finding a new job, I’m talking about managing your career.  In this day and age, individuals need to take responsibility for career management.

A good time to review your resume is once a year, around review time.  I know not all companies do yearly reviews.  Maybe the review you get is not as valuable as it could be.  Regardless, set up your own time to review your career progress.

In the book, Debugging the Development Process, author Steve Maguire talks about a person with five years experience.  He makes a distinction between a developer with five years of experience vs “one year of experience five times over”.  Even though a developer has five years of experience, he may have done the same basic tasks for five years without increases his skills.  Another developer that has 2 years experience that has grown her skills each year may have more “real” experience then the person with 5 years.

Start now.  Dig up that resume.  Update it so it reflects your current experiences.  Take a good look at the what you have done in the past year.  How have you progressed over the last couple years?

Next, set up some goals for yourself in the next year.  I like to focus on four general areas:

Technology:  What technologies should I make improvements on?  What new technologies are coming up?  How can I better use current technologies?

Processes:  Learn about new agile methods?  Learn about how others are using the methods and improving them.  Learn a process you may be less familiar with like configuration management techniques.

People skills:  Don’t forget the soft skills.  I’m not necessarily talking management here (unless that is your goal).  Leadership can come from anywhere.  Unless you are a “one programmer team” you work with others.  Whenever you are attempting to influence someone, you are using leadership skills.

Business:  We don’t work in a vacuum.  What business is my company in?  What areas of that business can I get a greater understanding?

Once you have a list of general topics you want to focus on, make then concrete.  Pick enough that pushes you to grow in the next year, but not more then you can effectively commit to.

Next, make each goal measurable.  Write down something that you can do in the next year.  Write the goal such that it is obvious when you done.

Put a date with the goal.  If the goal has multiple parts, put dates to the sub goals as well.  For example:

Technology goal: Attain a greater understanding of Multi-threading in .NET.

• Research and choose a good book on Multi-threading by <some date>
• Read the book by <some date>
• Choose an application in which to use your new skills by <some date>
• etc…

People skills goal: Improve communication skills.

• Choose a topic you can present on by <some date>
• Prepare a presentation by <some date>
• Present to your peers at a lunch-n-learn by <some date>
• etc..

Next year, you can review the goals you accomplished and add them to your resume. 

These goals don’t all have to be specific to the company you work for.  It makes sense that they are so you can improve your career opportunities there.  However, add some personal goals as well.  I might want to learn a new language like Ruby or Python even though my company is a primarily a Microsoft shop or learn the.NET framework if your company is a Java shop.

You have to take charge of your career.  Your company may or may not take an active role in this.  Like many things in life, if you don’t manage it, it will most certainly manage you.

Scott Schimanski Esoterica