How do I write a resume for a career change? What should I adjust?

Ahhhh yes, the career change. A daunting yet exciting time in any young (or not young) professional's life. How could you not know as a teenager what you wanted to do to earn money for the next 40+ years?

We kid. We've changed careers too. I (Nate) ventured into software engineering at the age of 30 without prior experience. You can do it too! In fact, I'm so bad at updating my own personal website that my career change resume is still up there and it's a pretty good example of some of the tips outlined below.

While there are a few things we'd do differently for a resume geared towards a career change, the strategy for crafting your resume doesn't change. You use the best resume builder on the internet. And then ask yourself - what is most relevant to the job/employer that I am applying to? This is what should be emphasized, both in precedence on the page and in focus/ordering of your bullet points.

As far as how to adjust your resume if making a career change, there are a few tips we have and things we'd suggest considering.

A "Summary" section

While normally we are staunchly anti-summary for anyone who is applying to jobs with a resume that is a reasonable/obvious fit for the role, summaries are a key part of framing your career change narrative successfully. They should very briefly (2-3 lines ideal, 4 lines max) help highlight the pieces of your background that are relevant and inform the reader just what you are looking to do now (and perhaps a quick why, though what is more important). The 'why' will play a bigger role in the interview. You want the reader to be able to skim your summary and think "oh okay, I get why they are applying to this job now".

Section order

Side projects / certifications may want to get top billing over work experience. If you are making a career change, hopefully you have both 1) some relevant work experience, even if just bits and pieces of your past roles, and 2) evidence that you are serious about this career change in the form of certifications, skills, side projects, etc. Just saying you want to make a career change probably isn't enough - you need to demonstrate that in your actions. There are a few ways to showcase relevant side stuff on your resume. In some cases you may just want to have Certifcations/Skills listed just below your summary and above work experience. Alternatively you can have a separate section (also probably above Work Experience) called Other Experience that is formatted like Work Experience but contains bullets on all the actions you've been taking to prepare yourself for the career change (learning, courses, certifications, side work, etc). Or you could also just include a section like this at the top of your Work Experience like I did on my resume here.

Work experience bullets content and ordering

Let's say you've been working as a client project manager for the last few years, but now you want to make a shift into an account or sales role. Chances are there are parts of your current role that would be applicable - "transferable skills" you might call them. For example - no doubt you're interfacing with/managing clients and coordinating teams. In an account role client relationships are paramount, and you'd still be coordinating with internal teams to build proposals and close deals. Maybe as a client project manager you've had clients love and rave about you. Maybe you've even done such a good job with some clients that it's led to a stronger relationship / more business / new contracts. These are great and relevant things to highlight! Rather than using your top bullets for your project manager role talking about delivering projects on time and under budget, coordinating development teams, and other not-relevant-to-sales responsibilities, focus on the other client-centric aspects of your role and expand on them as much as you can. The basic project manager stuff that is less relevant can just be a single quick bullet at the end.

Massaging past job titles

Though we aren't suggesting outright lying (don't do that), in some cases your past experience titles can be slightly adjusted to make them feel more relevant at a glance. Let's use the same project manager example from above. Maybe your official title was just "Project Manager". If you're trying to move into account management you could make your resume title "Client Project Manager" when applying for accounts roles. Or if you're making a career change into engineering the title could become "Technical Project Manager". Subtle shifts like this can make your resume read very differently to someone skimming through it (everyone who "reads" it skims it at first). Nobody is verifying your official titles at the resume screen stage (nor probably ever), and if you're lucky enough to make it to the offer stage of a process and feel the need to clarify before they contact past employers you can certainly do that separately then.

Don't fully discount past professional accomplishments

Even if your past work experience has a different focus, your accomplishments and successes still tell a story about you! Especially if a company is going to take a chance on someone making a career change, they want to know that you are a smart, capable, and responsible worker who can get shit done well. You should 100% keep mention of your best and most impressive objective accomplishments regardless of direct relevance to your new intended career focus.

Avoid industry-specific jargon in your past experience

If you're using verbiage, acronyms, and phrases in your work experience bullets that are specific to your past field that you do want to keep for your career change resume, re-phrase things so that someone unfamiliar with that industry can still understand what you did.

Cover letters are probably a bit more important

We have written about the usefulness of cover letters and that still applies, but if you're making a career change and the employer you're applying to does take the time to read your cover letter it is a great place to share more about the 'why' of your career change in a way that piques their interest and gets you a conversation. Think of it as a sort of long-form version of your resume summary section (but also with a good chunk dedicated to your interest in this specific company & role, of course).

Getting creative

While not a resume-specific tip, career changes often require even more careful effort to get conversations, and spraying and praying applications out will likely have even less success then they do for a "normal" job search sans career change where your background is immediately relevant. Our advice post on how to get an interview includes a step-by-step framework that we would strongly suggest applying when making a career change.

Now go make that career change - you've got this!