No matter how long you’ve been working, whether it’s been a year or 22 years, a career change could be exactly what you need. Maybe you just finished up a new college degree. Maybe you’re ready to fully pursue your passions. No matter your reason for changing careers, you need to know how to write your resume for a career change.
Because your job experiences may not directly relate to the field you now want to work in, you need to know how to best position yourself. This doesn’t mean lying, changing your listed skills, or even putting down a job title that doesn’t reflect reality. It does however mean writing a resume that better showcases your strengths as an employee and how your career change would be beneficial to potential employees.
Play to Your Strengths
When you’re switching careers, some or all of your previous job experiences might not directly relate to your new career choice. So, how do you make your old positions relevant? Rather than worrying about how your jobs relate, figure out how the skills you obtained from your past jobs can be applied to the jobs you are interested in now. Did you manage a team? What did you accomplish in your previous positions? Did you learn new skills? Through the responsibilities of previous jobs, you can show potential employers in your new career field why you would be an incredible addition to their team.
List Relevant Skills
Over your career, you’ve probably amassed numerous skills that make you a great employee. However, they may not all be appropriate or relevant to your career change. This means you need to pick and choose which skills you are going to make you stand out as a job candidate. For example. if you’re applying for a job in which you’ll spend a lot of time on the computer, then listing manual labor skills probably isn’t relevant so leave them off your resume.
List Your Education and Certificates
Since you’re changing careers, there is a good chance you have a new degree, technical training, or certificates under your belt. Because these are new, you need to make sure you include them on your resume. By showing these to potential employers, you validate your reason for applying to a job in a field that you don’t have experience. Furthermore, if you don’t have those things, you might consider achieving them to help you in your job search.
Have you successfully changed careers? What did you include on your resume? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!