As a headhunter, I have the joy of seeing an incredible array of resumes. Some of them are absolutely abominable, most of them are "okay" and every once in a while there are some that are astoundingly good.

For the ones that are not astoundingly good, my comments are always the same. When you are a technical professional and looking for work, you can expect that the resume you write will be instrumental in helping you land a job that pays no less than 100k per year and that you should have an average stint of three to five years from it. That means that your resume is a pivotal tool to bring you closer to 300k to 500k of income, and for high end sales professionals this number triples or quadruples.

As such, anything that is so instrumental in bringing so much money through the door is worth a lot more attention than it usually gets. The first request I make is that the candidate read a few current books on how resumes are done these days. After they have read the books and have a better idea of what a good resume looks like and has in it, they should pay a few hundred Dollars or Euros for a professional to do it for them.

Why read the books first? So you know what you're buying! So you can be armed with knowledge that will help you recognize, appreciate and actively contribute to high quality work, as well as recognize and combat shoddy work when you get hit with it. Why not do it yourself? Do you sew your own suit, or buy it from a tailor? Do you make your own furniture, or buy it from a store? Do you cut your own hair, or go to a stylist? As we all know from our daily lives, a specialist can usually do things more quickly and to a much higher quality than someone who "dabbles".

However, that's just the start. Of all the books I've read on writing a resume, they usually end up being a style and content guide. To date, I've not found a book that touches upon what I consider to be the most important parts of resume writing, and that is timing and environment.

Very simply put, a resume is a marketing document that is not there to tell your life story, rather to generate sufficient interest in a potential employer that they'll want to bring things to the next level. And like most marketing instruments, it needs to be able to send the initial and most compelling message quickly, often within one or two minutes. A resume needs to highlight your strengths, your abilities, your accomplishments and your value add. Like most creative efforts, a resume needs time and consideration to gain shape and mature.

And time is exactly what most resumes don't get. When the headhunter calls, the resume is dusted off and updated over the weekend. When the pink slip party happens, the resume is pulled out and worked on while the candidate is in the worst imaginable emotional state. In the end, the vast majority of people, recruiters included, are managing their resumes the same way they are managing their careers - reactively instead of proactively.

What should be happening is that the resume is treated like a permanent work in progress, being pulled out and updated every six to twelve months, or whenever there is a significant event or change in the professional environment. Did you get a new boss? Then it is a good time to sit down and think about what great things you and the old boss accomplished together.

Did you just wrap up a challenging project? Document it! Were you promoted? Congratulations! Then it is time to think about and document what you did so well in your old job that got you promoted. Give yourself at least a week and schedule the time to review the document every night when you get home from work, not while you are on holiday.

Most importantly, this needs to be done when you're in your best emotional state. You should always work on your resume while you are on an emotional high and nothing else. If you wait for the headhunter to call or for things to get uncomfortable at work, you won't be able to get your head into the right frame of reference and the quality of work you generate won't even approach its true potential.

When updating your resume, take notes on your thoughts and make them as long as you need to, then boil them down to their essence and adjust your resume accordingly. Keep your resume as long as you need to in order to maintain all of the potentially useful information, 10 pages if you must. When you apply to a specific position, pare it down to the expected two or three pages by removing anything that is not directly relevant and doesn't specifically serve the purpose of getting you in the door of that particular prospective employer.

When you take the time to review your resume regularly, while you are on an emotional high and give it a full week of scheduled time, ideas will pop into your head that you would otherwise forget. You get a chance to play with wording and content order to your heart's content. In the end, you'll see that the document you create isn't just a piece of paper with relevant information on it, rather a crisp, clean, informative and powerful work of art that gives you a compelling story and makes you simply irresistible!

Edward Caulfield is a recruiter based in Germany, specializing in customer facing skill sets in high technology. He also runs the blog http://www.goodnewshappens.com