TIL I stopped rewriting my resume from scratch every time I applied

I used to open a blank doc for every single job and retype everything from memory, which took me like 2 hours per app and I'd still forget stuff. Last month my buddy Marcus, who works in HR in Austin, looked at my laptop and said 'why are you not saving a master copy with everything on it.' So now I keep one master resume with every job and skill I've ever had, then cut it down to a page for each posting in about 15 minutes. I sent out 9 apps in one weekend after that, which was more than I'd done all of January. Does anyone else keep a master version or do you just tailor per job from scratch?

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graceprice25d ago

The thing nobody talks about with a master resume is how fast it grows once you start tracking the small stuff too. My buddy keeps his in a Google Doc with a section at the bottom just for one-off projects, like the two weeks he spent running the register at his dad's shop in Tulsa, or a random Excel sheet he built for a church fundraiser. Most people skip that stuff because it feels minor, but that's exactly the line that fills a gap or matches a weird requirement in a posting. If you only save the big jobs, you end up back at a blank page trying to remember the little things from 4 years ago. The cut-down part is easy once the master has everything, even the stuff you think doesn't count.

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