Career Change Resume Writing Requires A Very Different Approach Than Conventional Resume Writing
Since your career change resume will be competing with people who are not changing careers and who are submitting a standard job resume, you will need to implement the following six career change resume writing tactics to secure an advantage over your competitors.
Keep in mind that the sole purpose of your career change resume is not to get the job, but rather to get your face in front of the persons who are making the hiring decision [i.e.] to get a job interview.
Career change resume writing secret #1:
Employers Want to See Evidence
A person submitting a standard job resume may be able to get away with generalizations when describing their work experience simply because they have worked in the industry previously.
But when performing career change resume writing, your industry experience is usually nonexistent.
Therefore it becomes critical that you provide detailed documented evidence in your career change resume of how you have used your transferable skills in other positions and also instances where you have used them in non-work situations.
When I say documented evidence, I mean up to half a page of each example of exactly what you did and how this fits in with the requirements of the job you are applying for.
Example of career change resume writing:
Let’s say you are a qualified doctor, but after many years of practice, you have decided that you have been lacking in motivation and passion for quite some time.
You have thought quite a lot about a career in selling and after completing an inborn job skills analysis, you make the big decision to initiate a career change.
As you tackle your career change resume writing, you identify one of the transferable skills from your job skills list that you want to use in your job resume: influencing and selling skills.
While practicing as a self-employed doctor, you ran weekly staff training meetings for six nurses and reception staff in your business.
Your goal in the staff training meetings was to produce an extremely high level of excellence between the reception staff and nurses and the patients they interacted with on a day-to-day basis.
You introduced some fairly novel methods of customer service and ideas to achieve a culture of excellence as a way of ensuring your patients kept coming back and to grow your business.
Because of these somewhat radical and novel approaches, you had to do quite a bit of “selling” these ideas on a regular basis so they would be willing and enthusiastic to implement these new strategies.
So as you embark on your career change resume writing, you use the above example as a basis for explaining in detail how you used those skills in your staff meetings.
You would want to talk about perhaps what happened the first time you submitted some of these new ideas in your staff meeting, how the individual staff members responded to that, how you began to overcome some of the initial objections that were raised, and ultimately how you achieved your goal of changing the culture of customer service in your business.
If your job resume communicates this well, any prospective employer will see that you definitely had to use selling skills in this part of your job and therefore you potentially satisfy this aspect of the job application.
Career change resume writing secret #2:
Your Career Change Resume Writing
is an Exercise in Marketing
Your job resume is simply a marketing document.
In the same way that a sales representative tries to sell his products or services to a business owner, career change resume writing is a marketing exercise whereby you need to sell your product [you] to a business owner or board of directors, etc.
And as the case in all marketing, the successful marketers are the ones that design and implement a marketing campaign that stands out from the rest.
In every aspect of your career change resume writing, think “In what way can I make this job resume different from all the others [often hundreds] that the employer will have to read.
And so that my resume does not become just the same as all the other job applications the employer will read
There is one overriding characteristic to any job resume that is the key to securing a job interview if it is communicated positively.
Passion!
Genuine passion is absolutely irresistible.
But there is a big difference between genuine passion and manufactured passion.
If you are trying to be passionate, forget it.
If you are trying to be passionate, then it’s not passion.
There is only one way to have genuine passion, and that is to be totally in tune with what your natural motivated abilities and inborn job skills are.
To-know-that-you-know you absolutely must be in a job where you can express yourself by utilizing that certain skill set that is dear to your heart.
If you are not clear what this skill set is, then I recommend you complete the dream career finder inborn job skills assessment.
This is the best career assessment instrument that I know of to identify your innate passions and motivations in regards to the world of work.
Career change resume writing secret #3:
Use the ‘So What’ Principle
If you are now sold on the idea that your career change resume writing project is primarily a selling and marketing issue, then using this “So What” principle will catapult you ahead of the rest of the field in your marketing of yourself.
Here’s how works:
Every time you write something in your career change resume that relates to a benefit you believe you are offering the employer, then simply imagine the person who is reading your job resume saying “so what” to your claim.
Then go about answering their “so what”.
For example:
You might propose to write the following in your career change resume:
“When I was running staff training sessions for my staff, I needed to introduce some innovative new measures relating to customer service which I knew might meet some resistance from the staff and nurses.
So I had to sell my ideas to them and this is where I begin to gain selling experience.
(Once again, you would want to talk about some examples of what happened the first time you submitted these new ideas in your staff meeting, how the individual staff members responded to that, how you began to overcome some of the initial objections that were raised, and ultimately how you achieved your goal of changing the culture of customer service in your business by using your selling skills.)
Employer says: So What?
You Say: So if you decided to employ me, you could feel confident that even though I do not come from a sales background, I have actually been using selling skills like in this instance and in a number of other ways for many years.
Employer says: So What?
You Say: This means that you do not need to have any concerns whatsoever about employing me just because I do not come from a structured selling background because I have gained selling and influencing skills from these other areas while working as a doctor.
Employer says: So What?
You Say: So you can feel confident when discussing my application with the board of directors that I do satisfy the job description requirements.
This “so what” principle forces you to cover every objection that could, and most likely would be raised by the employer as they read your job resume.
This method of career change resume writing results in a very comprehensive marketing script that provides good evidence that you have the job skills list they are looking for.
So instead of selling yourself with the following words in your career change resume writing:
“When I was running staff training sessions for my staff, I needed to introduce some radical new measures relating to customer service which I knew might meet some resistance from the staff and nurses. So I had to sell my ideas to them and for this reason, I have had some selling experience.”
Your career change resume writing has now advanced to include a more in-depth self-marketing description.
“When I was running staff training sessions for my staff, I needed to introduce some innovative new measures relating to customer service which I knew might meet some resistance from the staff and nurses.
So I had to sell my ideas to them and this is where I began to gain selling experience (talk about some of those ideas).
So if you decided to employ me, you could feel confident that even though I do not come from a sales background, I have actually been using selling skills like in this instance and in a number of other ways for many years.
This means that you do not need to have any concerns whatsoever about employing me just because I don’t have a structured selling background.
I have gained selling and influencing skills from these other areas while working as a doctor.
You can feel assured when discussing my application with the board of directors that I do satisfy the job description requirements.
Career change resume writing secret #4:
Changing Careers Is Good
We are living in a world today where increasingly; change is respected and seen as a positive thing.
The average amount of time a person spends in one job has been decreasing over the past few decades and many employers now see someone making a significant career change as a potentially positive attribute.
Being stuck in the wrong job and staying there is not something to be proud of.
But seeking good career change advice to alleviate that frustration is nearly always a positive move.
As you go about your career change resume writing, be sure to convey the fact that you also see this time of career change in your life as a very constructive move.
Once again, articulate your reasons for why you see this as a good move.
For example, you would probably want to draw their attention on your job resume to the fact that over the years you have become more and more aware of your innate motivations and abilities and now you want to realign your career to make use of them.
And then you would communicate what your natural work motivations and abilities are using detailed examples as per #1 above.
Career change resume writing secret #5:
Support the Employer’s Risk-Taking
Asking an employer to take you on as a new recruit when you don’t have any experience in their industry has an element of risk involved for him/her.
But most employers are not afraid of risk [this is how most of them got into the business, to begin with], but they must be given good reasons to take the risk and see that the risk is worthwhile and justified.
Your career change resume writing should include some empathetic words to illustrate to the employer that you understand there is potentially some risk involved in employing you.
And then go about justifying why this risk is limited and how it carries some great opportunities with it.
[The opportunities, of course, are the fact that they are employing someone who has very accurately identified their unique work passions in life and can demonstrate this with examples, see #1 above.
There is nothing more than a business wants then somebody who loves to do the work they are employed to do.
And if you have identified well your core motivations and inborn job skills, then that will be exactly the position you should find yourself in.]
Career change resume writing secret #6:
What Is Your Career Change Unique Selling Point
In the world of business, we talk about a Unique Selling Point [USP] in relation to what unique aspect of a business can be used to draw customers in.
For example, if you owned a cafe, a possible USP might be that you serve fair-trade coffee or that you are open till 11 PM every night or that you offer a generous discount loyalty card system, etc.
A USP is the job market functions in the same way.
What characteristics of you as a job applicant separates you from the other job applicants.
Many people say, “I don’t really have anything that is different from the other job applicants”
If that is true, then you do not have any reason why an employer should employ you.
But I believe this is not true of you.
There will always be characteristics of a person that will differentiate you from other applicants.
The key is to identify these, then develop the details further for those defining differences so that you can communicate these through your career change resume writing.
As mentioned above your biggest and best USP will always be associated with those inborn abilities that you love to use and are good at.
When you are using these innate gifts, work becomes an absolute pleasure.
In fact, many people describe it as “not work at all”. Time just seems to fly by when you are involved in doing things you love to do.
If you haven’t already done so you can identify your USP by completing the dream career finder inborn job skills assessment.
When you can articulate well to an employer what things in life you are most passionate about and those passions happen to be in line with their needs, you have a well-synthesized relationship.
The answer to true satisfaction and fulfillment in all work is a person’s capacity to get in touch with those talents that they are born with and naturally motivated to use.