Changing Career Focus? Change your Resume, too

If you’ve decided a change in your career path is in order, you may run into some difficulty when it comes to writing resumes and cover letters that showcase your skills effectively. Changing career directions requires that you rewrite both your resume and cover letters to emphasize skills and professional attributes that will be relevant in your new career, rather than concentrating on skills that were important in your previous one.

The resume you write is going to have to convince an employer to take a chance and hire you when you have the skills but not the experience, so you have to emphasize your transferable skills very heavily. Transferable skills are those skills you gained in your previous career that will be useful to you in your new one. Only skills that support your new career focus should be included on your resume—anything that is not relevant should be left out.

It’s very worthwhile taking some time to look at job advertisements for the type of position you’re seeking. Look at the requirements of each job, and try to reframe your current skills so that they’re more relevant. For example, if you’ve been working as an administrator or secretary and are looking to switch to a career in sales, it’s important to emphasize communication skills, customer service and interpersonal skills over clerical duties.

Relevant transferable skills can often make career changers very attractive to employers so it’s worthwhile choosing a resume format that will emphasize them. Most career changers will find that a combination or hybrid resume is the best choice. This type of resume emphasizes skills over work history, and is ideal for showcasing your transferable skills. The work history in a combination resume is much shorter than in the standard chronological resume format. When writing your work history, a simple description of each job is sufficient, with job title, company name, location, and dates. Skills and accomplishments need only be included for jobs that have relevancy to your new career goals.

Whichever format you choose, your resume should lead with an objective statement that defines your new career goals. When you are changing your career focus an employer won’t be able to tell what type of job you’re looking for by looking at your work history, so including an objective statement is particularly important. The objective statement should open with a short summary of your most relevant skills, then mention the position you are applying for, and how your transferable skills can benefit the company.

Also, please review our Tools to Find a Job section.  If you need more help, please consider using a Career Counselor.