Nostalgia can be fine to indulge in–if kept in its proper place. When you’re engaged in planning a job search or trying to do smart career management, nostalgia might be a costly indulgence!

Why is that? Because the core ingredient of nostalgia is looking backward, rather than forward. The word is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

NOSTALGIA AND YOUR RESUME

Although your resume does deal with what you’ve done in the past as well as what you’re doing now, if it’s essentially a career obituary, it’s not going to be as effective as it needs to be. For the same reason we no longer depend on a now-antique steam engine to pull the train we ride to work, your resume needs to adopt a forward-looking, forward-thinking approach.

If your outlook–and your resume–are mired in the past, you run the real danger of appearing old and tired to potential employers. They might even consider you irrelevant in today’s business environment. That’s a risk you don’t want to run and don’t need to.

Sure, it’s great if you’ve had many positive employment experiences and still have fond memories of the best ones. However, the only real reason for looking back at them is to dig out the gold nuggets that will help you demonstrate your potential to deliver high value to future employers.

OLD & TIRED RESUMES DO YOU NO FAVORS

If your resume gives the impression of being outdated or out of touch in some way, that impression might be the first one an employer has of you–and the last! Your resume could end up in the stack of “maybe I’ll get to it later” instead of the short pile of “ones I want to look at more closely.” That is not where you want your resume to land!
What could make your resume seem old and tired in employers’ eyes? For starters, it might:
 

• Rely on a format that was “dated” even 10 years ago.
• Use wording that could describe a lot of people, instead of just you.
• Lean on “job description” terminology that carries no impact, no value message.
• Try to cram a lifetime of experience into two dense pages or ramble on for three or even four pages.
• Make the potentially fatal mistake of failing to capture employers’ attention and interest from the very beginning and assuming they’ll care enough to read the rest.

If your resume makes any of the above mistakes (or ones I haven’t mentioned), you might want to take a hard look at it. It’s almost certainly not doing you any favors–sending it out might almost be like shooting yourself in the foot in terms of interview opportunities!

What should you replace your “old and tired” resume with? One that will enable you to rise above your competition and make you a stand-out candidate, of course!

Among other things, that means it needs to present a fresh appearance, include a clear and compelling value message, and keep employers’ interests in mind from start to finish.

So what are you waiting for? Start transforming your old and tired resume into one that soars!

P.S. If you think you need help doing that, let me know. I’d love to help you gain the competitive edge you need and deserve.