Noting new COVID-related skills and responsibilities in your updated career resume

Noting new COVID-related skills and responsibilities in your updated career resume.

If you haven’t heard of the Corona Virus 19 (or the Wuhan [Chinese] Virus or COVID), you are truly living under a rock.  Folks do not realize COVID has directly or indirectly impacted every employee in the United States, if not the world.  Why is this important to understand, and why is it related to your job search success?  You likely have new or additional tasks for which you are responsible at your job site (if you don’t work 100% from home) and with well-orchestrated direct interactions with clients, contractors, or vendors. 

Your updated job tasks and responsibilities are likely to encompass COVID-related actions.  New duties and additional functions should be documented on your resume for your career search.  If you are in the health, medical, and first-responder industry (e.g., police, EMT), these COVID-related and additional job responsibilities should be showcased in new bullets on your career resume. 

For instance – you may be a front-desk receptionist, and you may be tasked with taking digital readings of guests for fevers. You may have to ask a litany of questions related to visitors’ health conditions. You may even have to turn away guests, clients, or vendors with a fever or symptoms of COVID in the last 24-to-48 hours.  Nurses have taken on the testing of patients before surgery.  Guards at military base gates are scrutinizing identifications harder. In some cases, security is only allowing pre-authorized entry to some. 

Spas and salons and massage franchises had to create new policies and procedures for when and how to service clients, service them ‘safely,’ and sanitize the rooms, chairs, and foot baths between clients. These are additional tasks in addition to the ‘pre-COVID’ era policies.  Even grocery clerks have personal protective equipment (PPE) they wear while checking out shoppers and are wiping the counters or product conveyor belts between checkouts. 

Service personnel – including plumbers, mechanics, and HVAC technicians – are required by their employers to wear masks at all times. Service techs must mask-up at the worksite and during interactions in clients’ homes and practice social distancing.   Professional drivers – cabbies and limousine workers – may now have to clean their vehicle or wipe down client-shared surfaces between fares (per city or state compliance orders, as well as CDC recommendations).  Facilities managers may have to take on the added task of segregating workers between hanging barriers (plastic sheets or glass partitions). Managers may have had to get these bacteria- and virus-segregating materials via special orders and acquisition through special budgets or funding. 

The COVID-era of social distancing has forced some workers to move to digital communications – Zoom or Google Meetings online – and resort to mostly email or telecommunications.  Those working in ‘call centers’ before the COVID may have moved to their home in telecommuting or had to work within schedules that shared alternating office-hour work schedules (some schools are moving to limited in-class sessions).   Have you updated those essential skills to notify future employers you are capable of using that technology? 

If you are a school teacher and back in classrooms, what are your newly added responsibilities after students go home? How are you grading your students’ work in this COVID-era?  Are all your grade assignments via digital submission only, or do you still grade papers the ‘old-fashioned’ way?  How do you sanitize and safeguard yourself and your students?  How do you handle parent-teacher meetings or consultations?  How are disciplinary actions carried out in the school by the teacher and/or principal?  Add these answers to your resume in ‘action’ verb bulleted descriptions.

Architects, bank tellers, delivery drivers, car salespeople, and even fishermen have had to consider the COVID virus.  Many of these haven’t considered documenting job tasks related to the COVID virus – new responsibilities that can be highlighted on their resume.  These additional skill sets are vital to point out in the current COVID-era on your career resume. 

Your future employer may be looking for those candidates who have ‘walked the walk’ during the pandemic … those who have developed new skills and forms of communication via technology to use in their companies. They may also be looking for qualified candidates who are not scared of the virus – or those already vaccinated.  Be prepared to explain how you enabled your current (or past company) to continue operations and – more importantly – to continue earning revenues or reducing overhead expenses to your potential new employer.

Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., owner of D. Boyer Consulting – provides resume writing, editing, publishing, and print-on-demand consulting. Reach her at Dawn.Boyer@me.com or visit her website at www.dboyerconsulting.com.

Need a new resume or need to update a tired old career document?
Call today! 757-404-8300

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Noting new COVID-related skills and responsibilities in your updated career resume

Noting new COVID-related skills and responsibilities in your updated career resume.

If you haven’t heard of the Corona Virus 19 (or the Wuhan [Chinese] Virus or COVID), you are truly living under a rock.  Folks do not realize COVID has directly or indirectly impacted every employee in the United States, if not the world.  Why is this important to understand, and why is it related to your job search success?  You likely have new or additional tasks for which you are responsible at your job site (if you don’t work 100% from home) and with well-orchestrated direct interactions with clients, contractors, or vendors. 

Your updated job tasks and responsibilities are likely to encompass COVID-related actions.  New duties and additional functions should be documented on your resume for your career search.  If you are in the health, medical, and first-responder industry (e.g., police, EMT), these COVID-related and additional job responsibilities should be showcased in new bullets on your career resume. 

For instance – you may be a front-desk receptionist, and you may be tasked with taking digital readings of guests for fevers. You may have to ask a litany of questions related to visitors’ health conditions. You may even have to turn away guests, clients, or vendors with a fever or symptoms of COVID in the last 24-to-48 hours.  Nurses have taken on the testing of patients before surgery.  Guards at military base gates are scrutinizing identifications harder. In some cases, security is only allowing pre-authorized entry to some. 

Spas and salons and massage franchises had to create new policies and procedures for when and how to service clients, service them ‘safely,’ and sanitize the rooms, chairs, and foot baths between clients. These are additional tasks in addition to the ‘pre-COVID’ era policies.  Even grocery clerks have personal protective equipment (PPE) they wear while checking out shoppers and are wiping the counters or product conveyor belts between checkouts. 

Service personnel – including plumbers, mechanics, and HVAC technicians – are required by their employers to wear masks at all times. Service techs must mask-up at the worksite and during interactions in clients’ homes and practice social distancing.   Professional drivers – cabbies and limousine workers – may now have to clean their vehicle or wipe down client-shared surfaces between fares (per city or state compliance orders, as well as CDC recommendations).  Facilities managers may have to take on the added task of segregating workers between hanging barriers (plastic sheets or glass partitions). Managers may have had to get these bacteria- and virus-segregating materials via special orders and acquisition through special budgets or funding. 

The COVID-era of social distancing has forced some workers to move to digital communications – Zoom or Google Meetings online – and resort to mostly email or telecommunications.  Those working in ‘call centers’ before the COVID may have moved to their home in telecommuting or had to work within schedules that shared alternating office-hour work schedules (some schools are moving to limited in-class sessions).   Have you updated those essential skills to notify future employers you are capable of using that technology? 

If you are a school teacher and back in classrooms, what are your newly added responsibilities after students go home? How are you grading your students’ work in this COVID-era?  Are all your grade assignments via digital submission only, or do you still grade papers the ‘old-fashioned’ way?  How do you sanitize and safeguard yourself and your students?  How do you handle parent-teacher meetings or consultations?  How are disciplinary actions carried out in the school by the teacher and/or principal?  Add these answers to your resume in ‘action’ verb bulleted descriptions.

Architects, bank tellers, delivery drivers, car salespeople, and even fishermen have had to consider the COVID virus.  Many of these haven’t considered documenting job tasks related to the COVID virus – new responsibilities that can be highlighted on their resume.  These additional skill sets are vital to point out in the current COVID-era on your career resume. 

Your future employer may be looking for those candidates who have ‘walked the walk’ during the pandemic … those who have developed new skills and forms of communication via technology to use in their companies. They may also be looking for qualified candidates who are not scared of the virus – or those already vaccinated.  Be prepared to explain how you enabled your current (or past company) to continue operations and – more importantly – to continue earning revenues or reducing overhead expenses to your potential new employer.

Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., owner of D. Boyer Consulting – provides resume writing, editing, publishing, and print-on-demand consulting. Reach her at Dawn.Boyer@me.com or visit her website at www.dboyerconsulting.com.

Need a new resume or need to update a tired old career document?
Call today! 757-404-8300



The Best Host for Websites – Highly Recommended for Customer Service

InMotion Hosting Affiliate