Building your "master list" so tailoring is fast next time
Okay you guys. Last time we talked about why I'd rather send five tailored résumés than fifty generic ones. Somebody in the back asked the question I was waiting for: doesn't that take forever?
Honestly, not if you set it up right the first time. That's what today is. We're building what I call the master list, and once you have it, tailoring a résumé for a specific job takes twenty minutes instead of two hours.
What the master list actually is
It's not a résumé. It's the opposite of a résumé. It's long, it's messy, and nobody but you ever sees it.
The master list is every job you've had, every task you did, every accomplishment you can think of, every number you can dig up, all in one document. Three pages, five pages, however long it takes. You are not trying to make this pretty. You are trying to make it complete.
Think of it as your ingredients drawer. When you're tailoring a résumé for a specific posting, you're not writing new lines from scratch under a deadline. You're pulling the right ones out of the drawer and leaving the rest in there for next time.
How to build it, step by step
Start with every job, going back as far as you can remember. Don't edit yet. Don't worry about the one-page rule, that's not what this document is for. Just list them: job title, company, dates, and under each one, everything you did.
For each job, write down tasks in as much detail as you can stand. Not "customer service." What did you actually do all day. Answered phones, handled returns, trained new hires, closed out the register. Get granular. You can't tailor from a vague memory later, you can only tailor from a specific one.
Then go back and find the numbers. How many people did you train? How much did you cut costs, or increase sales, or speed up a process? How many customers a day, how many accounts, how many square feet. If you don't have an exact number, get close. "Around 30 a week" is more useful than nothing.
Add the soft stuff too, but translate it as you go. This is where I think about my daughter Brynn. She was sitting at the kitchen table one day watching me fill out an application, and she asked why I was lying about liking teamwork. I laughed and told her I wasn't lying, I was translating. Same thing here. If you were "good at communicating with customers," write down what that actually looked like — de-escalating complaints, explaining a return policy clearly, whatever it was. Put both versions in the master list if you want. You'll decide later which one earns its spot on the actual résumé.
Don't skip the jobs that feel irrelevant. Babysitting, yard work, the summer job at sixteen. I made Brynn a starter résumé for exactly that kind of thing, because even a first-timer needs somewhere to start pulling from. You never know which posting is going to want "managed a schedule for three families" or "handled cash transactions independently." Put it in the drawer. You can leave it out of the recipe later.
One opinion, while we're here
Every line in that master list should be something a stranger could verify. Not on your final résumé necessarily — this is the raw pile — but as you're building it, get in the habit now. "Hard worker" doesn't go in the drawer. "Trained four new hires in my first six months" does. If you build the habit here, it's already done when you tailor later.
Keep it as one running document
Don't make a new master list every time you apply somewhere. Add to the same one. Every time you finish a project at your current job, add a line. Every time you get a number you're proud of, write it down that week, not two years later when you can't remember it. I keep a spreadsheet of every job I've applied to and what happened with it — same instinct. Document it now, so you're not guessing later.
Before next time
Start your master list this week. You don't have to finish it, just get every job and every task down in rough form. Next time we'll pull from it to build an actual tailored résumé for a real posting, so bring it with you, even messy.