Keeping a Hero Book

by B. Dear

Hopefully, as you progress through your career you will have a lot of accomplishments and you will complete a lot of training. To keep all of this documentation together in a central location, you will want to start and keep what I call a “Hero Book”.

A “Hero Book,” is a collection of documentation that shows all of your accomplishments throughout your career. It includes your resume, copies of your diplomas, your transcripts, your certificates, your references, letters of recommendation, and any documentation received from awards you have won for superior performance.

Here is how you build one.

Obtain a smart looking binder, possibly with a leather cover. Fill it with high quality plastic document protectors. After filling the books with document protectors, proceed to filling it with the following documents in the following order.

• Your resume goes on top
• Follow your resume with superior performance documents (awards,etc.)
• Then list all your diplomas, highest to lowest
• Follow that with training and certification documents.

List all documents highest to lowest then chronologically with most recent closest to the front of the book.

At the right time in the interview, brief your qualifications from the book using the book as presentation. The purpose of the book is to impress the interviewer with an abundance of proof that you are the most qualified for the job. Seeing the documents presented in the book in black and white really creates an impression and gets you noticed. It also shows that you are organized.

The book will also help you chart your career outside of the interview room by putting all of your documentation in one place so you can review it yourself. You can plan the training you seek to make the book as complete as possible.