Preparing your Resume for a New Career
Wednesday February 10, 2010
Changing jobs is a major event in any persons working life with the average Australian apparently shifting careers around five times in their career. While this level of diversity and change can be an exciting part of any career, in order to make these transitions between various jobs successful you need to arm yourself with the best possible resume to represent your skills.
Of course when embarking on such a major transition in your personal career you need to prepare yourself for both the hurdles, potential jobs sectors trends and barriers that may pop up when trying to enter a new industry.
The biggest hurdle you may come across is lack of experience when it comes to your new career and being seriously considered for jobs. The key to your own success will be in the way you present yourself through your resume.
When composing your resume for a new job in a new industry, the best thing you can do to improve your chances of getting an interview is to recognize and highlight your transferrable skills. Think outside the square into your personal life as well as professional for skills you have learnt and organize them into a list and try to match them up with skills that would be required from the new careers you are pursuing.
Transferrable skills are generally sorted in three categories of technical, transferable and people-focused.
- Technical - specific job-related skills that are from one particular occupation or profession
- Transferable - general standard skills that are applicable across various industries such as communication skills or leadership qualities.
- People-focused - more based upon your own personality traits and qualities such as reliable or self-motivated.
Finally, put together a cover letter that clearly outlines your motivation for the career change and gives an adequate background while also providing the recruiter with a clear reason for why you want to work for company.
The biggest challenge for you will be seriously promoting your suitability to the new career while disguising the fact that you have limited, if any, experience. In this case, a skills-based or functional type of resume would be most appropriate with a clear career objective outlined to clarify your long term goals.
Of course, once you have decided on a career change, remember it is not an overnight transition, especially is further study or training is required, and it may even see a decline in wages if your experience is lacking.
However, when you are spending so much of your life at work, sometimes the only answer is a career change to find the jobs that will encourage long term employment in that field.