4 Quick Tips for Resume Spring Cleaning

I don't know about you, but we're heading into a busy season here. Track season is winding down, chorus concerts are on the calendar, and my college kids are coming home for the summer. I'm excited about all of it — and completely aware that my bandwidth is about to shrink.

With everything coming down the pike, I don't have a lot of time for busy work. I'm sure you don't either. And when you're busy, the last thing that you are thinking about is updating your resume or LinkedIn profile unless you are in an active search.

When clients come to me, they often have ignored their LinkedIn profiles and resumes for years because they just had too many competing priorities. They haven't needed to update things, so they just put it on the back burner. I completely get it.

The good news: if this is you, you can make up for lost time fairly quickly.

Here's what I suggest in getting started:

1. Be clear on your goals: Know what you want to do next (the types of roles/clients that you are looking to attract) and focus your efforts on highlighting the impacts/results that you have delivered in these areas in the past.
2. Demonstrate your value through numbers: I'm an engineer by training, so I make spreadsheets for everything. I get that this might not be you - however, I challenge you to quantify what you can and show numbers (product revenue, etc) whenever possible.
3. Weave early experiences into your summary: When you have high-profile early experience, you don't need to leave that on the 2nd page of your resume. Highlight this in your Executive Summary to show your career journey in a clear and concise way.
4. Use headlines to grab the reader: Leave the objective statement in the 1900s where it belongs. Modern resumes and LinkedIn profiles focus on what the employer/client is looking for. Your goals are important to you, but not necessarily important to future employers.

One more note: this may not be the weekend for you to do this work. Just know that when you are ready, making these updates may not be as hard as you think.

And if you'd prefer to not do the work yourself, feel free to reply to this message and let me know how I might be able to help - I still have a few open spots remaining in late April/May, but I'm booking up fairly quickly.

And if you want a head start on all of the above, I have decided to bring back the $29 price for the Ageless Careers Toolkit - it's my complete guide for job search, resume, LinkedIn, interviewing, and cover letter best practices ($249+ value). Use the coupon code NEWJOB2026 at checkout You can learn more about the toolkit here.

Take care of yourself and have a wonderful weekend!

Colleen