You should always have a CV handy and keep it up to date

You’re gainfully employed, you love your job, you’ve been in your company for a couple of years, and haven’t looked back since.

Where’s your CV now? Gathering dust somewhere on your computer if you’re lucky. It could be gone altogether if you’ve changed computers since you last changed jobs and didn’t bother transferring your files (or your computer died on you).

You can bet that one of these will be knocking at your door: your dream company will start advertising your dream job; an internal opportunity that you’ll need to interview for will come up; your manager will do something that will make you want to run for the hills (and look for another job), a redundancy/dismissal or a Plague will hit.

Eeeek, you need to come up with an updated CV, like now, and it’s already 10pm, and you have absolutely no recollection of your achievements or even what your current job entails. Mind blank.
Raise your hand if this has never happened to you, I want to meet you!

For the rest of us, let’s learn from our mistakes and make sure this doesn’t happen again.
You are starting your CV basically from scratch, so start by jotting down all the achievements you can remember from your current job and past jobs, onto a piece of paper. Then flesh them out, adding as many measurable as you can.

This is a great exercise for your current job, if you keep a good record of your achievements, you can use them to negotiate pay raises and promotions. And when the day comes that you need an up to date CV, you can copy/paste your achievements and sort them by relevance. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

Did something out of the ordinary at work today? Take 5 minutes to add that achievement onto your CV. You can always take irrelevant achievements off your CV when you tailor it for the job you want to apply for. But nothing is easier to forget than your day to day achievements.

Sometimes, it’s easier to start a new CV from scratch, rather than try and squeeze your most recent experience into the formatting you last used.

It’s also a good opportunity to dust-off your profile, get rid of your summer/university jobs if you have over 3 years experience in your industry (unless they are actually relevant, but I somehow doubt that).

Your CV is now nice and ready - email a copy to yourself, this way you’ll have a backup should any computer mishaps happen.