5 Tips For A Career Change CV
By Andrew Fennell
If you’re looking to enter a new industry, adapting your CV to highlight your relevancy to your chosen career is essential.
Researching and experiencing new roles is a crucial element in deciding whether to follow a different career path, before matching the skills within your CV to the sector you’re looking to pursue.
Below are the tips to follow to produce a CV that will help you achieve your career change goals.
Research your new field
Researching your chosen industry prior to producing your CV is key to tailoring and customising your application. This is especially true when you’re looking to pursue new sectors.
Identify companies or specific specialisms you’re looking to work within, researching them online. Review company websites, job adverts or even social media platforms. Adding keywords from your research into your CV, making it easier for recruiters to see your suitability at first glance.
Tailor your profile
When looking to change careers, your profile needs to reflect the reasons you’re making the move. Modify your personal profile at the top of your CV to include the experience, skills and qualifications that are relevant to the industry you’re applying to.
This is where your research of the field will come in useful. Include elements of your research to explain why you’re looking to make the move at this point in your career.
Do some voluntary work
Boost your applicable experience by volunteering. Giving you an insight into the sector as well as allowing you to showcase how your strengths can transfer to the new position.
Highlighting your initiative to trial positions before making the move and potentially allowing you to add industry relevant endorsements to your CV or your LinkedIn profile.
Structure this experience within your CV in the same way you would include paid experience. Documenting the company name, your role and listing any duties you undertook. Add more depth to your CV by adding any accomplishments achieved during this period.
Highlight transferable skills
Whilst you may not have all the expertise yet to excel within a new career, you will have skills that can convert to different positions. Include these strengths throughout your CV, especially in your opening profile, grabbing recruiters’ attention at the top of the page.
Look to insert examples, adding any related facts or figures to verify your abilities.
For example, if you’re looking to move into a career within the digital marketing sector then include skills such as creativity, the capacity to come up with new ideas or your ability to analyse data that you’ve proven in previous roles.
Only include what’s relevant
You may have a vast amount of experience in your previous career but knowing what to include and what to remove is key.
When working backwards throughout your career history look to shorten your role descriptions, adding more depth to your most recent/current position or those more pertinent to your career change.
Keep your CV concise, keeping it relevant to the industry you’re looking to pursue, engaging recruiters and maintaining their attention.
Andrew Fennell is a former recruiter and founder of StandOut CV, a leading advice centre for CV writing and job search. Andrew contributes careers advice to a number of sites including The Guardian, Business Insider and CV Library.
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