Career Transition Resume

Making a transition in career is an immensely difficult phase for a professional. By far, one of the most challenging issues is to be able to project yourself as a valuable candidate to prospective employers. Creating a winning resume for this purpose plays an important role in assisting you effectively in the transition. Depending upon the degree of leap you are taking, you need to design your resume. If you are changing jobs but remain in the same industry, it is not considered as a transition and a chronological resume, (which boldly lists your work history and responsibilities), can be safely used. However, the same can be damaging if you are transiting into a completely different industry altogether. You need to apply some design skills and work hard to tailor your resume to suit the new industry. This can be done with either a hard core functional resume, or a combination of both the chronological style and the functional format.

The functional resume:

If you are making a radical change in your career, then this is the type of resume you need to use. A functional resume is one which focuses on skills and abilities and downplays the chronology. It brings to the forefront your unique talents, transferable skills, and achievements and deemphasizes those aspects of your career history that have little or no relevance to the current job search. Given below is a framework of how you could successfully craft a winning functional resume.

• Summary of Qualifications / Profile: Just below the header, have a profile or a Summary of Qualifications section which will effectively highlight your abilities, talents, strengths, and knowledge. Utilize this section as a promotional banner to tell potential employers how well and to what extent you can contribute to the company or organization.
• Areas of Expertise: Make a list of the relevant areas of expertise and showcase them under this section.
• Career Highlights: This is a section you could use in order to display and give concrete proof of the value you have created in previous positions. Select a few (three or four), of those achievements which will have relevance to the extent you can contribute to the position you are applying for.
• Work History: Here you need to list the companies you have worked in, the location, and the positions you have held along with the tenure.
• Education and Training: Mention under this section names of Universities, location, degrees, and dates on which these degrees were received. Remember also to include honors, activities, majors, minors, additional trainings acquired, relevant coursework, and even your GPA (if it is above 3.0). Note that any type of work experience gained during this period should be mentioned in the work history section.
• Additional Information: This is a section you could have for including any additional information about you. For instance, language, computer, or research skills; professional affiliations; publications; speeches; certifications; and any other relevant data that would give weight to your resume.

The functional and chronological combination resume:

This type of resume is very useful for those professionals who wish to make a career transition but the transition is not major. For instance, if you are serving as a nurse in a hospital and wish to transition to becoming a private nurse, the fields are closely related and this type of resume would aid in displaying your skills, experience, qualifications, and certifications providing significant proof that you can be a perfect fit for the new role. The resume is basically the same as the functional one with only difference. Instead of the Work History section, you need to have an Experience section, stating not only the names of companies you worked in, job titles, locations, and dates, but also the responsibilities held under each position. This section has details regarding your duties, contributions, and achievements.

No matter what the reason is or at what stage it occurs, a career transition is exciting and not as overwhelming as it seems. Plan out your moves strategically and you won’t be far from your dream job.

Keep visiting our website and we will be back next week with yet another informative article. We would appreciate your feedback and suggestions which you could provide on feedback@preferredresumes.com