How to put together a career-changer resume

One of the trickier dilemmas for experienced workers is creating a resume for a new career path. How do you sum up past experiences without overwhelming an employer in a different field? More to the point, how do you present relevant abilities without shining a spotlight on your relative lack of experience in the new arena?

While good options exist for this situation, they are sadly outnumbered by the less effective solutions more commonly used. Among these are resumes that simply swap one objective or headline for another without changing the content or approach of the resume itself.

Another misfire is the resume that starts with one’s work history, with the most recent entry being from an entirely different career path. Even the well-intentioned functional resume style can go awry when all the skills being highlighted refer to the old career path instead of the new.

In each of these cases, the candidate is making the same basic mistake, which is to write the resume to demonstrate past experiences instead of highlighting skills applicable to future endeavors.

Here are the basic elements of a career-changer resume.

Headline: The careerchanger version needs to start with a decisive statement about your voca- tional intent. This can be a sentence, or simply a job area. For example, “Marketing professional skilled in social media” or, “Marketing professional.”

Profile: Two or three sentences encapsulating your strengths in the new field will focus the reader’s attention where you want it. “Marketing professional with recent training and skills in social media and related analytics. Additional experience in IT and manufacturing settings provides a foundation in website development, channel distribution and project management. Known for excellent organizational skills and the ability to communicate at all levels of an organization.”

Key skills: One good option here is a capabilities section that uses three or four sub-headings, each with short sentences or bullet lists. For example, the sub-headings for our marketing professional might be Social Media, Website Developmen, Writing/ Presenting and Project Management.

Marketing projects: This section would include two or three short paragraphs, each with a bold or italicized project name (ex: New Product Blog) followed by two or three descriptive sentences. The projects themselves can be from anywhere: volunteer commitments, school assignments or even a different line of work.

Professional experience: Here comes the tricky part. List your current or last work experience, but don’t highlight the job title or unrelated duties. For example, “Jackson Company – Production Department, 2008-present. Manufacturer specializing in performance wear for athletes. Special assignments have included meeting with packaging designers and representing the company at trade shows.”

Follow this model for each work entry, keeping the description brief and noting only those tasks related to your new career.

Education / training: If you’ve had courses in the new field, list them.

Additional information: This optional section might include volunteer activities, languages, etc.

Did you notice that this candidate spoke only “marketing” on this resume? No mention of manufacturing processes or computer networking or whatever unrelated tasks were undertaken in past positions. Careerchangers need to focus on networking and direct contact to potential employers, as the strategy is difficult to translate to an online application.