Career Change Resume

How to Write a Career Change Resume

Why do you need a career change resume? Well, career movement is not uncommon nowadays. In the age of information technology, people are smarter and are therefore very likely to possess multiple skills than what an average person would have had many years ago. This, however, also allows more people to apply for the same job such as what you are aiming for. This makes your odds of getting the job smaller. But do not despair because you have a key weapon to use to hammer down on the career you want. Your career change resume will play a great role in landing that job and what we will do is to guide you in creating a resume that is guaranteed to catch your potential employer’s attention.

Starting the Process

Many individuals make the mistake of sending a generic resume to employers. An expert on human resource can easily spot this. And when he does, the impression is bad. You, however, will not make that mistake. The first thing you need to do is to list the skill requirements of the new job you are hoping to get. Surely enough, the job advertisement may serve as your guide. However, you also have to think things through because there are some skills not indicated in the newspaper ad.

Assessing Yourself

After you have listed all the skills needed for the job, list the current skills that you have. A career change resume that works is tailored to fit the job requirement. As mentioned earlier, generic resumes are frowned upon. Compare your skills and the actual skill requirement of the job. Cross out your skills that are irrelevant and circle the skill requirements that you currently do not have. Assessing yourself is crucial so you know what you are getting into. Once you have the skills matched and balanced, you can now draft your career change resume.

Writing the Objective

This is a critical part of your career change resume. The wrong objective can lead your application to the trash bin right away. To do this right, you need to keep in mind that the objective is the complete package wrapped in a sentence or two. It’s like selling a product or service and essentially, that product is you. The objective should contain the position you are gunning for and a crisp summary of your qualifications. Your objective should not make you sound self-centred. What it should focus on is the skills and experiences you have that the company can use.

Highlighting the Keys

Now that you know the skills needed in the job that you do not currently possess, you need to highlight what you actually have. In your career change resume, list your skills in bullet points and expound on them. This also means focusing on the things you have done that are relevant to the job posting. Let us say that you want to shift careers from being a drug store clerk to a sales person. In this case, your resume should focus on your sales experiences and not on being a pharmacist confined in a shop.

Improving Your Skill Set

As mentioned earlier, there may be skill requirements that you may not currently possess. This is a major obstacle because other applicants will surely have what you don’t. What you need to do is to either learn or improve these skills. You can take a second job or you can volunteer. This should be enough to allow you to gain experience and improve the skill set required for your new career. If you have the budget, you can get a tutor.

The processes and steps required above may be tedious. You must realize though that you need to scrutinize the content of your career change resume if you want to ensure you have higher odds of getting the job. In today’s technology, you will have about 100 other competitors for every single position you apply for. You will only make a difference if your resume is superb and stands out among the crowd. You should not be too worried that your competitors may be better fit for the job. Most of the times, even the highly-skilled applicants do not land the job because they do not write their resumes very well.