How to rewrite your CV for a career change

You’ve seen a really cool job you want to apply for, but as you read the job description and its requirements, you’re not sure you have all of the relevant skills or experience. You think, “pfft, I won’t get that”, and swiftly move on. Sound familiar?

Changing industries, career direction or job doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage. It’s all about reframing the skills and experience you have to showcase how they’re transferable to the new role.

Here are our top 6 tips to get your CV in great shape.

1 . Start with a snappy summary statement

A hiring manager is likely to skim-read your CV to find the information that sticks out to them. Studies have shown that the average hiring manager spends under 10 seconds on each CV, so you want to make it as easy as possible for them to get a flavour of who you are. 

Highlight how your skills make you a qualified candidate for the role in a short summary, just a couple of sentences is enough. This should be specifically about the value you’ll bring to the role, not just about you generally. It should be tailored to showcase how you can bring your experience and skills from another area to create value for this employer. Be sure to cut out any buzzwords and use any metrics or stats you can.

2 . Make it easy for the hiring manager to find the critical information

There are lots of different ways to highlight your skills. You could use bullet points, tables or graphs. However you choose to show your skills, try to make the order of your CV reflect the priorities from the job description.

When showcasing career highlights, you can use a mix of qualitative skills (like leadership or creativity) and quantitative skills (impact in numbers), as well as the ways you’re developing your knowledge outside of work. Having a mixture will help the hiring manager to see quickly and easily different sides to your career. 

Remember, they probably won’t read everything. Make it easy for the person on the other end to find the critical information by making it stand out. CVs should be really tailored, take out any extraneous details that aren’t supporting your application. Make it easy for them to find what they need to progress you to the next stage.

3 . Think about your experience from a different angle

The most challenging thing about changing careers is presenting your expertise in a way that feels relevant to the new role or industry. 

Fear not; many transferable skills span across all industries, such as leadership, time management, and strategic thinking. Rather than listing duties from your previous role, write practical examples of transferable skills you’ve got. This will make it easier for the hiring manager to see the fit between you and the new role.

Think about how your knowledge in your current industry could give you an exciting outlook on the role or industry you want to move to. Suppose you currently work in corporate marketing but want to move to the charity sector. In that case, you can focus on how the things you’ve seen in the corporate world would benefit the charity or how the results of your actions created remarkable results in a particular campaign. It’s not about the content or details of the campaign but about how your leadership decisions or creative ideas impacted the results. 

The hiring manager wants to know as quickly as possible if you could do the job. Think about this when deciding what to include and what to leave off your CV. If it’s not relevant to the new role, industry, or showcasing your transferable skills, leave it out to make space for more valuable information. 

If you’re not sure what kind of skills you have, read our advice on presenting your skills to an employer.

4 . Consider your language

With each skill or example of experience you highlight on your CV, consider how you can change the language to suit the new industry better. For example, if you’re moving from sales into marketing:

Sales: “I prepared and executed sales pitches to clients at all levels. Most notably, I won my previous company a contract worth £1 million after a project I lead on.”

Marketing: “I developed effective communications collateral for presenting new partnerships to clients. Most notably, my work and presentation skills resulted in a contract worth £1 million for my previous company.” 

To get familiar with the correct style of phrasing, you can read lots of job descriptions from the industry you want to move to. You’ll be likely to see the same sort of keywords on each. Try to mirror the language they use, that will help them when reading through your CV to check off the boxes of what they’re looking for.

5 . Revamp your cover letter

If the job you’re applying for includes a requirement for a cover letter, this is an excellent opportunity to show your personality. You can explain here why you’re so passionate about changing careers into a new industry, why you’re passionate about this organisation in particular, and what you’re doing to make the career change (e.g. have you taken any courses, gone to networking events, or volunteered somewhere).

In your cover letter, you can showcase how excited about are about that organisation and the work they do, and how you can bring your enthusiasm, passion and skills to make an impact at that organisation. Always focus on the value you can bring.

6 . Apply anyway

It’s likely that other people applying for the position won’t have 100% of the job requirements. If you think you could do the job, just remember to tell them why you believe that based on your previous experience.

For more tips and ideas to help you on your career change journey, check out our Career Change Collection on the Escape resource hub.