How is your new year's resume?

Not long ago I was speaking with a group of human resources leaders, and the topic turned to annual performance reviews. Believe it or not, HR people hate annual performance reviews even more than the rest of us do. They're tedious, they take forever to fill out and get approvals on, and seldom is any employee satisfied with the results.

One of the HR people in the group said, "You know what we should do, in place of this time-consuming annual review process? We should ask each employee to update his or her resume, instead. If the resume hasn't changed in the past year, then the company isn't giving the employee what he or she most needs, in addition to a salary: and that's resume fodder — new, marketable accomplishments each year."

I thought the HR person's suggestion was a great one. If you pull out your resume and look at it, there should be something you can add or embellish

based on your 2007 accomplishments. But, sometimes, a year slips by without leaving any new or noteworthy on-the-job milestones behind. That's a problem, because in today's job market adding skills and keeping current with changing trends and technologies are keys to making a resume "sing."

If a year has passed and your resume looks the same, you're losing ground.

So, how to add resume feathers-in-your-cap in 2008? Sit down and make a list of workplace tasks and tools you'd like to try in the coming year. Those could come about in a number of different ways. Classroom training is only one of several possible approaches. You could gain skills and experiences participating on a committee or task force. You could ask your boss to offload a project or weekly responsibility to you. You could take over the mentorship of a younger employee. You could project-manage a cross-departmental initiative. If you run out of ideas, ask your manager for

help.

Time passes, and if our skills don't keep up, we're losing pace vis-à-vis the broader job market.

Make 2008 a year to bolster your resume with a half-dozen bullet points to keep you at the top of your game.

Liz Ryan is a former Fortune 500 VP, a 25-year HR veteran and an expert on careers and the new millennium workplace. An award-winning entrepreneur and workplace adviser, Ryan is author of "Happy About Online Networking" and founder of the global online community www.AskLizRyan.com. E-mail Ryan at liz@asklizryan.com.