A career change is a significant step in your career life which follows new challenges and demands a lot of adjustment. Among several other challenges you must face, you should definitely know how to create a resume for a career change. You cannot simply use the same resume when you switch your career into a new direction. Make sure you never make that mistake. In order to take a step in your desired direction, it is imperative that you do enough research about your new industry and then rework your resume accordingly.
Revamping your resume must include redefining your career objective, highlighting more relevant information, re-branding your experience and including more non-professional but relevant information.
Let’s learn how to create a resume for a career change in detail below:
Redefine your objective: If a new career is what you want, the same objective you used for your previous career is not going to work. This might mislead and even turn off the hiring managers. You must revamp or create a resume for a career change if you want to enter or succeed in your chosen field.
Think about what exactly you are looking for from your new career and clarify the objective in your resume. Remember to illustrate your goals clearly in the title and summary section in order to avoid any confusion or give the wrong impression.
Emphasize your relevant qualification: You might have a vast array of rich qualifications achieved from various fields you worked previously. But, remember not to include all of them if you want to create a resume for a career change. At first, sort out the skills and qualifications that pertain to your new career.
Of course, you can transfer common qualifications of your previous career to the new one but it is more important to extract and then highlight the major relevant qualifications of your professional experience. Talk to a resume coach who will guide you through what to emphasize on your revamped resume.
Redesign your experience: Redesign your experience in your resume in a way that resonates the newly chosen career. Transform or re-brand it by changing the industry-specific terminologies or keywords to describe your past industries in an innovative way.
If you are unsure of how to create a resume for career change by redesigning experience, you may start by researching about the industry online, conduct interviews and attend programs related to the industry to get some insight. It’s not a bad idea to talk to a resume coach.
Include non-professional information: While you are trying to create a resume for a career change, you often need to make a lot of adjustments including the exclusion of some of your valuable experiences that are not relevant.
However, you can recover the loss by adding up non-professional experiences which might be inclined towards your new career direction. Include any non-professional activities that pertain to your target career or industry, such as volunteering experience, internship, membership, extracurricular activities, etc.
A resume is often the first thing you should rework for a successful career transition. Only a targeted resume can pass through an initial screening test and get you an interview call. Since a career change is often about shifting to an entirely different industry, using the same old resume format for your new career is a huge mistake you must avoid.
Therefore, redesign and reword your resume, highlight more relevant information and exclude more irrelevant information in order to adapt to the new industry you apply for.
Follow the above tips on how to create a resume for a career change and see the difference in your job search. Hire a Professional Resume Writing Service for help.