How to get your resume ready for a career change.

Photo credit: Enisha Digital

Maybe you feel unfulfilled at your current job or you have a new passion to try something different. Whatever the reason, you have decided to pursue a career that matches your new interests that you have developed over time. Scott Dinsmore on his TED talk says that the impossibilities we have in our head are just milestones waiting to be accomplished if we push beyond those limits. Venturing to a different line of work may offer benefits for a better work and life balance. Your resume needs to be updated and focus on the relevant skills set.   

Resume style

Use a resume format that is ideal for changing careers. Since you don’t have much experience in the new field then you can use a hybrid resume style. This is a combination of the functional and chronological format. What it means is that your skills are higher up in the resume followed by your work experience is lower. You still need to include an account of your work experience for clarity to your potential employers. 

Objectives

This appears at the beginning of your resume. You begin by quickly summarizing your skills and the relevance in relation to the new industry. To have a strong resume objective you need to be brief and specific. For example, “Professional accounting with over 5 years’ experience seeking to transfer skills to finance industry…”  

Skills

Demonstrate your value by describing in details the hard and soft skills that you have acquired in your career journey. This section follows your objectives. The skills mentioned need to relate to the job description. It could be leadership, team work or communication skills. The goal is to convince the hiring manager that you qualify to fit the position. 

Education

Provide brief bullet points after each educational listing to indicate what skills you developed. If you pursued education aside from your college degree like a certificate of attendance or participation, it is also relevant to put it in your resume.    

Employment history

Change the focus to the abilities you’ve used or gained in your previous career. The employer in your new field will focus less on you having little experience and more on what you can offer. Look at an example of a teacher who has changed fields to apply for a data associate working on a voice-operated human interface device. Instead of focusing on the academic aspects of teaching, they can center on the communication skills that teaching entails like effective oral and written communication.

Interesting read

Factors you should consider before making a career change.