Should you add books and conferences to your resume?

One of the folks who reads my newsletter, Tim, asked me:

 I read job-related books, visit conferences, etc. Is that worth mentioning on a resumé. If so, where?

A lot of it depends on how much other stuff you have on you resume. There’s a constant balance between length and demonstration of skill.

In my case, earlier in my career I absolutely put that stuff on there, at the end of the resume after my education. I think I had a section called “Ongoing Development.”

More recently, I’ve got a good amount of recent, high-impact project work, and a handful of very active open source projects that demonstrate ongoing learning, so I tend to drop it off just to keep my resume a bit shorter.