From the course: Writing a Resume

How to handle a career change

From the course: Writing a Resume

How to handle a career change

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- If you are attempting to make a career change, then you've probably heard, "You don't have any industry experience. You'll have to start over from the bottom. You'll have to take a pay cut. It's not possible. It's too late." Or any number of other extremely unhelpful comments. Making a career change is not easy, but there are ways to structure your resume to profile your experience in the best light. There is a widely circulated report by the Ladders which suggests that recruiters spend an average of six seconds looking at your resume. Just six seconds. The first thing they look at is your name, and your location. The second thing they review is your professional history, with starting and ending dates, and then they look more closely at your work history to determine your stability. Your next employer is more interested in what you've done than what you say you can do, because results are measurable, reviewable, and proven. This matters to you if you're changing careers, because you might not be able to demonstrate in your professional history that you have the experience or the stability they're seeking. When attempting a career transition, it is okay to remove extra information from your resume. You can omit portions of job responsibilities, and no, this is not lying, it's customizing. If your last job included both a sales and a finance function, but you're now applying for a job that is strictly finance related, you'll want to downplay the sales aspects and increase the responsibilities on the finance side. If you were the office manager for a small office where you handled everything from ordering supplies to managing staff to managing an office expansion, and now, you're applying for an office manager position within a large office, where your only function will be to manage the staff, again, you'll want to pare down on the other responsibilities of your job. Where it gets tricky is in the reverse, and this usually applies if you're in the middle of a career change. If you had limited responsibility in one area, and you're applying for a position which is larger in scope or somewhat different in scope, you have to go back to your past jobs, and find the aspects of your experience that are translatable. Remember, the company wants to see what you have previously accomplished, and how that helps them solve the problem they have now. So how do you make an impact and give your future employer what they want? In the argument for and against using an objective, using an objective wins in this instance. An objective can help you to focus the reader, and alert them to why your resume is in their hand for this particular position. Your summary of skills will also accomplish the same goal. But there is also a risk of being considered underqualified. What you can do in this case is bring in experience you might have outside of your current job, highlight skills within your current job that are applicable to your desired career, and demonstrate that you have advanced knowledge of this new area. Identify the keywords, phrases, and must have skills for the required job. This includes making a list of the tasks that appear frequently throughout the job posting. Additionally, look at the tasks that are labeled as required skills or as preferred, but not required. The suggestion here is to not really mimic the requirements of the job, but demonstrate where in your past experience you have already solved the types of problems your future employer may have. This is the step many of us get wrong. Keywords are great, but they are not effective if they're not accompanied by results. An employer wants to see that you have the skill, and can apply it. This is why accomplishments, achievements, and measurable results are so important for someone changing careers. Every section of your resume will be impacted, from your summary of skills to your work history, your education, and your volunteer work. It will be necessary to find relevant keywords, and provide evidence that you are the solution to their hiring need. If a career change is in your future, start reviewing your resume with the critical eye of your future employer.

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