spring clean your cv

I like it when the daffodils are blooming, and the blossom is covering the trees. It seems to awaken the "spring cleaning" gene that's usually buried deep. But luckily spring cleaning doesn't have to be just about de-junking those piles of "stuff" that have accumulated over the past few months. It's also a time to think about new opportunities - and start to make them happen.

Your CV is a lot like the computer you wrote it on: it is proficient enough, but will be out-of-date within a year. Because the world of business is so rapidly changing, your CV, just like your PC, needs to be upgraded regularly in order to meet its newest demands. And if the basic model is too old-fashioned to cope with the upgrades, it’s best to throw it out and get a new one, with all the latest new-fangled additions.

Making the decision to have a radical CV overhaul is the easy part. Knowing where to start is slightly more difficult. Do you begin with the skills you most recently attained, or with your fifteen-year-old exam grades?

The answer is: neither. Because before you rebound into writing your next CV, you are going to create a personal Career Data Bank. This stockpile of skills will act as a stepping stone between CVs, which you can add to as your career and CV requirements change.

Creating your Career Data Bank

You can now do this online, in a format that you can reuse again and again. Get your i-portfolio at www.iviva.com and you've got a permanent record that you can access from anywhere, and easily add to.

• On a piece of paper, begin a brainstorm, in whichever format you like. Scribble down, using your last CV only as a reminder, the:
• skills
• attitudes
• knowledge

that you have acquired or used at work.

• With each skill you note down, remember to include examples of its use, and the results this use yielded. Be indiscriminate. Throw anything down that you think a prospective employer may find relevant.

• When the time comes to apply for new jobs, this will be your one-stop-shop for CV renovations. From your Career Data Bank, you will be able to pick and mix from your collected skills, attitudes and knowledge in order to create a focussed profile that will match the job’s candidate specifications.

• Do this now, even if you’re not looking for a new job. If you do, it will be much quicker to create focussed CVs in the future - and speedy CVs are vital if you stumble across a job opportunity close to the closing date.