Resume Summary for Career Change: 5 Expert Tips
An informative career summary is paramount for catching the employer’s attention from the first sight. Yet, in a career change resume, it performs another important function. The summary should explain how your prior background aligns with the role you’re seeking. Moreover, it has to prove that you’ve got the needed skills and competencies to excel at it.
Previously, we’ve published a guide to career change resumes (you can read the article here: http://resumeperk.com/blog/career-change-resume-tips-from-professional-cv-company). And today, we are going to explain how to write a resume summary specifically. If composed right, it will help you communicate how the employer will benefit from hiring you.
Have no time to write a resume by yourself?
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5 signs you’re ready for a career change
Are you considering a career change but haven’t made a final decision yet? Here are the surefire signs that the change will be right for you:
✓ You cannot realize your potential. Maybe, your skills are not used to its fullest or your current career doesn’t let you develop the competencies and skills you want. Or, you have a global feeling that you’re doing something that isn’t right for you and contradicts with your goals, principles, or values.
✓ You experience physical and mental health symptoms. If the job serves as a source of stress, you may start experiencing insomnia, frustration, depression, apathy or other mental health issues. And if you keep feeling dissatisfied with your job, you can even encounter frequent headaches, stomach aches and other physical symptoms.
✓ You stay on the job only because of paycheck. Having a lucrative paycheck is important, but this shouldn’t be your only motivation for work. This situation might give you the feeling that you’re trading your life for money. The job should give you other important feelings, such as fulfillment, joy because of work well done, professional development, and more.
✓ You have no interest in what you’re doing. You no longer think how to achieve the sales targets or how to be on good terms with colleagues. The task assigned by your boss irritate and discourage you, and you don’t find them challenging. All these are signs that your true career passion lies somewhere else.
✓ Your priorities have changed. Maybe, you want to make a different impact on the world, and your current job doesn’t allow for it. Or, you want to spend more time with the family, and the it’s common in your industry to work on-site for 12 hours a day. Or, you’ve discovered a new hobby and want to monetize it – no matter the reason, you need a new career that meets those priorities.
How to write an effective summary?
Writing a summary takes a little research and in-depth evaluation of your career story to understand what matches your target career. Take the following steps:
✓ Seek the theme that unites your past and future career
In a summary, you should unite your past experience and skills with the requirements for your target job. For instance, if you’re an accountant transitioning to data analyst, the summary should reflect your analytical skills, research skills and ability present trends and findings and make data-driven decisions. In other words, your transition should seem logical for a recruiter, as this gives you a higher chance for consideration.
✓ Rely on the job posting heavily
Nobody is questioning why to find a job online these days – everyone applies via the internet. Yet, before you sent a resume, make sure that your summary reflects what the employer asks for in a job listing. If the company is seeking someone with strong customer service, troubleshooting skills and working knowledge of operating systems, find the way to mention them early on your resume so that the recruiter sees them for sure.
✓ Adjust the language
Each industry has its abbreviations and slang, hardly understandable for someone outside of that field. One of the top things to do on your career change summary is to make the language more neutral and clean it from insider words and abbreviations. Thus, you won’t look as a total stranger trying to break into the industry but rather as someone who knows something about the new industry, which is always preferred by employers.
✓ Don’t forget the accomplishments
Employers like accomplished candidates, even if these accomplishments lie outside the industry. If you’re a bank clerk looking to switch to IT sales, the fact that you exceeded sales targets for banking products will work in your favor. Be specific and prove your statements with figures where it’s possible. Yet, since the summary length is limited, include no more than 1-2 most notable achievements.
✓ Add your career goals
When you make a career change, your professional goals are not clear from the context. Thus, you need to include 1-2 sentences to outline what kind of job you’re after and what you can bring to the table. It will save time both to you and the hiring manager. For instance, you may end the summary like this: “Seeking to use strong Python coding skills to offer timely and efficient coding to an IT company”.
Give your resume a head start
If you’re not sure how to align your past experience with the new career on a resume, rely on help of a custom resume writing service. Our experts will make your accomplishments and qualifications shine. We offer affordable prices for resume services and a 20% off for all new clients.