By Bob McIntosh

Consider this situation: you’re hundreds of miles away from your computer, where your résumé is stored. A hiring manager from a desired company sends you a text that reads, “Saw your LinkedIn profile and am impressed. Trying to fill an operations manager position. Like to see your resume today.”

The only device you have is your phone. (We always have our phone with us, don’t we?) In a situation like this, wouldn’t it be advantageous if your résumé is stored on your phone? But, alas, it isn’t. Opportunity squandered.

This situation isn’t hard to imagine. I present it to my Résumé Advanced workshop and ask them, “Do you have your résumé on your phone? I’m lucky if four out of 20 raise their hand. The others register on their face that Ah ha moment.

A circumstance like the one above prompted me to write a long post called, Is your résumé stored on your phone? My LinkedIn connection, Tiffany Appleton share it with her network, increasing the number of reactions of my original post to more than 5,000. It’s still got legs.

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Many people have written to say it’s something they never thought of, while others have said they have their résumé stored in various formats on their phone. A few said it’s bad practice to store a generic résumé on your phone; after all, a résumé should be tailored to each particular job, right?

How do you get your résumé on your phone?

If you don’t know how to store your résumé on your phone, the process is quite simple. I use Google Drive for the location of my résumé. You can use iPhone’s cloud or Dropbox for your location.

From Google Drive on your lap/desktop, click New > File Upload > select résumé in PDF and Word. Momentarily your résumé will appear on your android or iPhone. From your phone, you can share it via email or text to recruiters.

You should store your résumés in both PDF format and MS Word. Word if you want to tailor your résumé to the requirements of the job, as the respondents to my update correctly suggested.

What other documents should be stored on your phone?

Your résumé isn’t the only document you can store on your phone. Depending on what hiring authorities want, there are a plethora of documents which can help you in your job search.

1. Executive Networking Document

Executive-level job seekers should have this document on their phone, especially if they’re conducting networking meetings. This is a one-page document that is essentially half résumé, half networking information: title, company type, and target companies.

To learn what this document is, read The professional networking document: how it can help during your job search.

2. Your LinkedIn profile

Did you know you can convert your LinkedIn profile into a PDF format? You can, and from days of past it looks much better. It can only be converted to PDF, and it’s long. Mine is five pages. This is another document you might consider storing on your phone.

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3. Ten success stories

The number is arbitrary, but if you have success stories for when you increased revenue, decreased cost, improved processes, eliminated waist, trained others, etc; these are powerful short testimonials you can share with recruiters. They would also serve as great reminders before interviews.

Use the STAR formula. S stands for situation, T your task in the situation, A the actions you took to solve the situation, and R the result.

4. A proposal or two describing how you’ve solved companies’ pain points

Although not tailored to a particular company to which you’re applying, it gives hiring authorities an idea of what you can do in solving a major problem. This would be similar to your STAR stories but longer and written with more detail.

5. Your elevator pitch

Written in Word so you can modify it, your elevator pitch would be a great document to store on your phone. In my Personal Commercial workshop, I have my attendees write their elevator pitch and read it to the group for valuable feedback. We remember information when we write it

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6. A presentation

If you’ve created PowerPoint presentations, Google Drive will convert it into a Google Presentation to be stored on your phone. My valued colleague and executive résumé writer, Maureen McCann, offers this as a suggestion. I immediately added my Résumé Advanced workshop on my phone.

7. Personal business cards

If you think personal business cards are dead, you’re mistaken. Many networkers miss the days of passing out their cards at networking events (during this pandemic). See them as mini résumés that include your contact information; social media URLs; areas of expertise; and in some cases, your photo.

The tricky part of capturing your personal business card is taking a picture of it. Unless you’re really good with a smartphone camera, the picture can look amateurish. Probably a better thing to do would be to send a digital personal business card, but these things haven’t gained much fame.

8. Recommendations

One kind reader, Teresa Cook, draws my attention to another file you should store on your phone, recommendations. Those you can find on someone’s LinkedIn profile you might think. Not necessarily. You see, not everyone is on LinkedIn or uses it on a regular basis (I’m guilty).

Be the one who says to a recruiter, “I have four stellar recommendations stored on my phone. Would you like me to send them along?” This hadn’t occurred to the recruiter. Bazinga.

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Don’t be caught unprepared

Getting ready to go on a vacation hundreds or thousands of miles away, don’t forget to store those important documents on your phone. Your job search is 24 x 7, so don’t be caught unprepared. It might make a difference between getting the job or not.

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