We recommend spending 20 minutes on this section
The most important part of building a pivot resume is telling the right story.
Your story is all about your transferable skills: how can your past experience help you shine in your dream career? In the last sprint, we asked you to start thinking about what those transferable skills might be. Now, it's time to start digging into those skills in depth.
If you didn't complete Sprint #1: Preparing to Pivot, that's ok! (We do recommend it, though). The transferable skills analysis is found in your Google Drive. Take a few minutes to review it, and then come back to this exercise.
How do I use my tranferrable skills analysis?
1.
Pull up your transferrable skills analysis.
As you look through it, circle the three to five skills you feel most confident and excited about.
2.
Do the opposite and look at your skill gaps.
3.
Pick out one or two that you feel especially insecure about, and start brainstorming ideas for how to address them. You don't have to come up with anything definitive right now – the point of this exercise is just to get you thinking.
We recommend spending 20 minutes on this section
Now that you have a few key transferable skills in mind, you can start crafting a summary statement. Summary statements are critical for career pivoters: this is where you can employers exactly why you're qualified for a role.
They should be short – no more than a sentence or two – and to the point.
Summary Statement Template
First, go back to your skill analysis and identify one or two things that make you a great fit for your new career. With your greatest strengths in mind, it's time to come up with a draft.
Let's break it down
[Strong Adjective] + [Job Title] + [Level of Experience] + [Key Feature in Career].
It's really that simple! Here's a great real-life example:
Social media-focused Marketing Manager with four years of experience growing small businesses through customer-centric content campaigns.
Let's take a moment to think about what else makes this summary statement work. First, it's specific. Instead of using a generic adjective like "talented" or "driven," this person chose to share her specific area of expertise – in this case, social media. Second, it uses result-oriented language. This person doesn't just write content or develop marketing campaigns – she grows small businesses! Focusing on your accomplishments helps set you apart from the pack and emphasizes your value to new employers. Your transferable skills are your guide as you craft a specific, results-oriented summary statement. Use them to think about what you want to emphasize and which accomplishments to highlight.
We recommend spending 30 minutes on this section
Like your summary statement, resume bullets should be short, sweet, and to the point. You want to make sure the information that really matters is available at a glance. To help you do that, we've come up with three guiding principles:
Guiding Principles
1.
Show, don't tell: It's not enough to claim you have a skill or let your job titles do the talking. Instead, demonstrate your skills with specific accomplishments. If you're a gifted negotiator, talk about a deal you clenched. If you have a natural talent for organization, mention something you've done to make the office more efficient. As much as possible, try quantify your achievements with metrics like sales numbers, new customers, or increased earnings. The more concrete you can be, the better.
2.
Make it relevant: You don't have a lot of space – so only include information that's relevant to the job at hand. Cut out fluff like old jobs or irrelevant awards and certifications. Instead, focus on your transferable skills. Highlight things you've done in previous jobs that show you're a great fit for the new role.
3.
It's you, not them: Every sentence in your resume exists for one purpose: to explain to potential employers how your skills are a perfect complement for their needs. There's no need to dwell on your past. This is your chance to prove you can do the job, even if you've never done it before.
Before writing your resume bullets, pull up a few job descriptions from employers hiring in your new field. As you write, you can consult them for inspiration and guidance about which skills to emphasize.
Crafting Resume Bullets
Here's a template for crafting concrete, effective resume bullets:
Let's break it down
[Active Verb] + [Contributions and Skills Used] + [Result].
It's really that simple! Here's a great real-life example:
Prospected leads and nurtured relationships individualized follow-ups and in-person meetings growing sales pipeline from 20 qualified prospects to 300 over two months.
We recommend spending 30 minutes on this section
So you've come up with a punch summary statement and condensed your career history into some concrete, specific, and relevant bullet points.
Are you done yet? Not quite! There's still one more step to building the perfect pivot resume, and that's customizing it for different potential employers.
The most important thing here is to conserve your time and energy. If you're going to be applying for hundreds of jobs, you don't need to modify your resume for every single one. Instead, concentrate on broad categories. For example, you might be applying to similar roles in different industries. Maybe you're applying to a mix of start-ups and more established companies, or to similar roles with slightly different focuses, like product management and product operations.
Spend a few minutes looking over the roles you're interested in and see if you can identify three or four broad categories. Read the job postings carefully – this can help you pick out key skills and areas of expertise that you want to emphasize. Once you have those categories in mind, start tweaking your resume. This isn't major surgery – a few words here or there will do. If you have experience that's specific to a particular industry or type of company, be sure to highlight it.
You're well on your way to tackling how to position your skills for this pivot.
Partner with a peer from your cohort to organize a bullet-writing session
Once you have a resume draft submit it in our Slack c-resumereviews channel for feedback from a professional.
Do you need to brush up on skills? We've curated a list of dozes of resources, books, courses, podcasts, articles, and more for each of our pivot tracks. Access the skill resources from your Dashboard here.
Check in with your cohort in the dedicated slack group and visit the c-skillsresourceschannel It's also a great place to talk about skill gaps and find new friends who are working on the same thing.
A few resources found in this sprint:
- Transferable Skills Analysis (found in your Google drive folder)
- Summary statement mad lib
- Writing a solid resume bullet
- Skill Resources by Pivot Track
-1.svg)
.svg)