Why You Should Update Your Resume—Even if You’re an Entrepreneur
“The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly, to do it because it is his will” (St. Elizabeth Ann Seton).
When I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2018, I rejoiced at the prospect of never again having to “dust off” my resume. Content with my decision to chart my own path and no longer feeling the need to keep myself fresh and polished for prospective employers, I let that stale resume gather digital dust for the better part of five years.
Recently, though, a unique work opportunity encouraged me to pull out that resume again. This time, I was not preparing to enter the professional job search; rather, circumstances dictated that I sharpen my digital presence, which included having a polished resume or CV ready.
This got me thinking: Can rewriting your resume, even if you never intend to actually use it for its intended purposes, be a useful exercise for entrepreneurs?
Taking the time to write a resume that reflected the full extent of my entrepreneurial duties, responsibilities, skills, and daily tasks proved invaluable, helping me through a process of greater, broader, longer-term career discernment.
Here are a few reasons why you might want to take time to rework that dusty resume, even if you run your own business (and plan to for the near future).
Defining Your Role
When you run a business, it’s easy to become lost in the minutiae of our work and lose sight of its greater context. As entrepreneurs, we rarely, if ever, sit down to distill all of our responsibilities, to think through and define the many hats we wear.
Writing a resume can help you wrap your head around what you do in your business from day to day. It offers an opportunity to switch off your default mode of working, growing, scaling, and serving clients to answer, honestly, the question, “What actually is my job?”
It helps to think of your role as CEO and founder of your business and to write a job description. What are your primary responsibilities? What skills do they demand? Whom are you serving? What are the growth opportunities in a role, or industry, like yours?
This exercise is useful in a number of ways. For one, it’s empowering: Writing down the extent of your responsibilities can show you just how much you actually do, giving you confidence and fresh energy to press on. Second, it can give you a sense of any gaps in your knowledge, experience, or skills. It can force you to ask, “What other skills does my job require? And, if I am lacking in these skills, what can I do to sharpen them?
Learning to Articulate What You Do
While a resume rewrite can help you internally process your role as a business owner, it can also sharpen your marketing messaging. When you sit down to write out all of your responsibilities and tasks in your business, you force yourself to articulate what purpose your business serves.
It helps to imagine you are pitching your company to investors or potential business partners. How would you distill your work into a single, compelling message about whom you serve, what you do, and why you do it?
This exercise is particularly valuable if you’re feeling a bit stuck with your website copy, social media marketing, or other messaging.
Extrapolate Your Services From a Narrow Context to a Broader One
If you work in a specific industry niche, it can be helpful to write your resume so that it applies to a broader audience. This exercise can help you know how to explain to people outside your professional circle how your business works and what purpose it serves.
For example, my business serves the legal industry. But, the skills I’ve developed in my work with clients are transferable to other contexts: content marketing, editing, managing a team of freelancers, and client communications, to name a few. Taking the time to consider how I am valuable as a professional outside of my specific industry niche empowered me to think, and even dream, about the many different possibilities for my career and the many diverging paths I could take.
Pulling yourself out of your industry or client niche can help you think of your business’ broader contribution and how it serves the market as a whole. This knowledge can serve you in the future should you plan to pivot into a different industry niche or client group. It can also help you understand yourself as a well-rounded professional whose unique skills are applicable to a variety of contexts. If you have been feeling stuck or uninspired, this exercise can be particularly empowering and rejuvenating.
Investing in Your Long-Term Career
Think of updating your resume as part of your long-term professional development. Detached from the stress and pressure of a job hunt, writing your resume can help you clarify your business’ mission and values; your expertise in your field; and your unique, unrepeatable contribution to the market.
This week, pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down at your desk, and take some time to clear the digital dust off your own resume. Then, see where the exercise leads you—and share your experience on social media! Tag @catholicwomeninbusiness (@cathwomeninbiz on Twitter). We’d love to hear from you!
Alexandra Macey Davis is a lawyer-turned-freelance writer and author. Most recently, she has written for Verily Magazine, Coffee + Crumbs, Public Discourse, The Federalist, and FemCatholic, and she writes a monthly Substack letter called Chrism + Coffee, a call to find peace and rest in both the sacramental and the ordinary. She is the founder of Davis Legal Media, a ghostwriting and content strategy company serving the legal industry. Her first book, Pivot: The Nontraditional JD Careers Handbook, will be published in late 2023. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband and two boys.