A career change is very much like a leap into the unknown. You are entering a completely new field where you have to compete with professionals. With the lack of experience, you may earn a lower salary. It sounds pretty scary and requires a lot of courage and determination. But here’s the thing: changing your career and moving to another area doesn’t mean you’re at a disadvantage.
First of all, you need to take care of writing an exciting resume even with no experience. It takes only 20 seconds for a recruitment manager to decide whether to read your resume or skip it. So if you want to go through the initial phase of selection, you need to do everything to make your resume stand out among the others. It’s especially required to have a cover letter supporting your resume where you can describe why you are suitable for the position even if you have no corresponding experience. That’s why you can use a professional cover letter service so that it’ll be created by specialists so you are sure the first step of applying for a new job will be passed.
Today, many companies not only welcome the cover letter but even require it without fail. A business needs to understand the motivation of a potential employee. Quite often motivation becomes a key point when applying for a job. Even if the company of your dreams doesn’t require a cover letter, write it anyway and tell why you decided to change your career.
Except for a stunning resume, there are a few other things you need to take care of in the process of a career change. Here are tips to help you successfully navigate the process of changing professions and get a job in a new field.
Set Aside Time for Preparation
Before writing a resume, explore a new area, research its peculiarities, and vacancies, and learn about the skills, education, and experience that candidates should have. While you gather information about the requirements, you can analyze how well your qualifications correspond to the new career field and what qualities and skills you already have, and which still need to be acquired or strengthened. It is the right time to attend conferences and training. You can find a mentor to guide you in the new working sphere. This approach will help you analyze your skills and understand which ones are not only suitable for career changing but will also give you an advantage over other candidates.
Build Portfolio from Scratch
For many positions, an employer does not look at how long you have been working in the profession, but at a portfolio e.g. for such a position as web design or developer. To create an eye-catching portfolio, it is not necessary to have real orders. The works can be created at the training stage while taking the courses, etc. The next step is to work for reviews to gain the trust of your future employer. Consider yourself an intern. When requesting feedback, formulate the question in such a way that reviews focus on the quality of the product and are comfortable working with you.
Use Social Networks
If you want to receive more cooperation offers, start social network profiles. You should start with the competent design of profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as on profile highly specialized sites in your niche (for example, Behance for a designer or Github and Stack Overflow for a developer). A professional profile photo makes a good first impression. Describe your specialization, education, and skills. There are cases when a well-written post about a job search brings in a huge amount of shares and eventually helps to find a great job. On LinkedIn, don’t turn down requests from HR – it’s their job to scout for new talent online. You can independently find profiles of HR managers who work in companies that are attractive to you and take the initiative.
Tell your Career Story through Achievements
Use numbers to show what specific value you brought in your previous place of work. Instead of simply saying that you have developed a process improvement strategy, it’s better to say that you have increased report processing speed by 10% through the development and implementation of a specific strategy. Be sure to make a list of your accomplishments. When you describe your achievements, you may use the problem-action-result format:
- what task was in front of you
- what actions you did do to solve it
- what was the result of your efforts
Conclusion
If you decide to try yourself in a new work field, do not be afraid that you do not have suitable work experience. Nowadays, there are many different training courses where you can easily learn new skills in a short period. The most important thing when changing jobs is how you write a resume and a cover letter to grab the interest of potential employers. For the most part, it is difficult to find a candidate who fully meets the requirements of the position. So do not be afraid to try yourselves even if you don’t fully meet the requirements and make useful acquaintances.
About the Author
Gillian Grunewald
Gillian is a talented writer with a strong research approach in the career field. Has over 12 years of experience in resume, LinkedIn profile writing and editing. Education Master of Fine Arts, Writing Eastern Washington University.
