Career Warrior Podcast #320) Changing Jobs vs. Careers: KNOW the Difference on Your Resume

Episode Transcript

Chris Villanueva:

Start passing your resume around now! Even as you’re coming up with different iterations of your document, start passing that thing around and start getting real time feedback.

And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast where our goal is not only to help you land your dream job, but to help you live your best life possible. So today, we’re going to talk about changing jobs versus changing careers know the difference on your resume. I have a lot of folks who have a different job situation, some folks are looking to land the same exact position at a different company. And some folks are like, “I got to do something different. I think it’s now. Now’s the time for me to make the leap.” And to make that happen, for me, using the resume as the catalyst to propel their job search forward.

So we’ll discuss the nuances surrounding career change resumes, I think that there are a lot of things that have to be brought up. And just going to make this as non boring for you as possible. I can get into the nuts and bolts of resumes here. But I wanted to bring in some inspirational career change stories of folks who have made the leap after the age of 30. I think there is something to be said about folks who are mid career or even later on in their careers who are making these changes. And so I want you to feel inspired to make that leap.

For those of you who don’t know, I am the founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma, a resume service for mid to senior level professionals. Head on over to letseatgrandma.com to hop on a free call to discuss what our resume packages can do for you.

Alright, so let’s discuss the difference between changing jobs and changing careers. At least when it comes to the resume before even going into the difference. I want to let all of you know that it is always important to start off all of your resume journeys, all of your job search journeys, and really understanding those key words and those key skills that are being used to search for a candidate like you. Whether you are looking to stay in the same exact job you’ve been in for the last five years, or you are looking to change from a construction worker to a project manager or a basketball player to a marketing analyst, I don’t care what it is, it’s important to have a good understanding of what hiring managers are looking for, and to really use that to propel how you craft your resume.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about changing jobs. I would say that this is the slight majority of the folks who I’ve seen come through at Let’s Eat, Grandma, like 60% of folks who are just looking to change jobs, they want to stay in their current trajectory as a program manager, perhaps apply for a program manager position outside of their organization.

And when it comes to the resume, of course, I mentioned doing your keyword research. But one question that I would use to guide your resume is what is going to be that spring board position that we need to focus on in the document? What is that one set of experiences that we need to highlight and say, “Gosh, I’ve done it before I’ve been in the same exact position title, I’ve actually affected some awesome results for the company. And what do I need to focus on?” Far too many times, I’ve looked at resumes that give equal weight to all of the different experiences and certifications. And there is no focus. And so with that lack of focus, my eyes as a hiring manager can just drift kind of like anywhere and that document and it might see something that’s not as relevant might not get that excited about you.

So again, what is that Springboard position? In many cases, it’s going to be that recent job you have on the document on your resume, or maybe the last two jobs if you’ve only had like a short stint at your last position. But make sure you think about that consider bringing in career highlights that are directly applicable for that next job you’re applying for. This is something that I’d say like 10 to 20% of you are actually doing out there. But if you’ve been developing this awesome career and you have multiple positions that speak to where you’re headed next, maybe we need to pull some career highlights in throw those on the summary at the very top, that first half is going to be something that’s really crucial for you to get down on your document that’s changing jobs. Just talking about some of the gotchas, some of the things that I think folks are missing out on.

Let’s talk about changing careers. This one is different. This is where I think a lot of folks just aren’t spending enough time strategizing and thinking about some of the differences that need to come across on the resume. It is harder to change careers. I’m not going to beat around the bush here. This is why people end up stuck doing the same thing year after year after year. are. And trust me, I’ve been there before, I’ve been in ruts, I know what it’s like to need the energy to pull yourself out of something and you have a whole bunch of things on your To-Do lists, and you just don’t do them. But I would push you here to at least start executing some of these changes on your resume and just take action today hear, I’ll give you some things that you can do in your resume. But don’t be overwhelmed or intimidated by what I’m saying just take action, some sort of small action today.

So your career change resume, you’re going to more than likely be tailoring it to a different set of core requirements, a completely different set of key words. And even how you are hired can be different, you don’t have the luxury necessarily have been able to being able to easily transfer over experiences or position titles to this next position. So for the career change resume, eventually you’re going to need just an overhaul overhaul altogether. To mention start small, but eventually we’re working to something that should look very different than your original resume.

So here are four things that I would like you to focus on to give that career change resume, the impact that it deserves. These are four things that I think probably make it different than just a regular job, change your resume, the first thing is bring it to the top. First piece of advice I’m going to give to you today is bring it to the top so whatever you have going for you, you want this to be visible right away front and center in the document, you don’t want to hide that on the document, you don’t want that to end up on page two or page three, or even at the bottom of page one, the biggest thing you have going for you which may not be your professional experiences, you want to bring it to the forefront of the resume. So this is why the skills based resume or the functional resume exists in the first place. Because your skills are what make you qualified for the role. It’s not necessarily your position title or your professional experiences, at least how they are communicated on the document. So with a skills based resume, you have the option to say okay, here are the three core skills or the three core requirements for whatever career I’m changing to and I’m going to lay those out for you on the first half of the first page of the resume. So you can just see it smack, right there the document, and this is why you’re qualified for the role. Again, this is tricky, because this is not the preferred format.

For recruiters, most people just want to see your chronological reverse chronological experiences laid out on the document. But career change, as I mentioned, is hard. And you need to get crafty in showing ways that you are qualified. So you don’t have to be skills based necessarily to bring it to the top, there are some other things you can do to bring those core qualifications to the top, such as utilizing that summary statement at the top, you want to bring the things whether it’s that NBA you are getting right now, or it is a project you’re working on with your team that is just paramount, or perhaps even some volunteer experience that’s directly applicable. I don’t know what it is but don’t be afraid to bring it to the top and even at the expense of some of your professional experiences.

Now the second thing I will say just kind of goes hand in hand. Second piece of advice I’ll give you is transfer those professional experiences, even if you bring it to the top, as I said earlier, and call those things out, folks, their eyes are just going to gravitate towards what you have made money on what your professional experiences are. So you don’t want people to see a mismatch between the job posting you want people to connect the dots so to speak, as to why you have these skills, how you’ve developed them and kind of what led to this transition you’re at consider the keywords based method.

This is a technique that I implemented, I can’t say it was my own, I probably took this somewhere from another wise resume writer, but with the keywords method in your professional experience bullet points. So imagining you have Acme, Inc, as your recent professional experience, and you have the bullet points that talk about what you did as a project manager at Acme. So on those bullet points, you can lead each one off with a key word that is applicable to whatever position you’re applying for. So you have that keyword. Let’s say you use the word sales management if we’re transitioning to a sales manager role. So you put sales management in bold colon, and then follow that up with whatever experience makes it relevant towards sales management. So by leading off each bullet point with a key word, you make it obvious how these experiences transfer over and hacky probably even captured the algorithm in some sort of way. So feel free to try that out. If you think that suits you the Third thing to do, when it comes to career change this is the third significant change that I would offer you is call it out.

Be honest about your career change. We’re not necessarily trying to tackle your career change resume from the perspective of, okay, let’s hide this career change, let’s hide the fact that I have been in whatever role that is not the same, or whatever industry that looks way different. I just read this, this was a good reminder from a Harvard Business Review article about career change resumes, that honesty is often the best policy when it comes to these changes. So I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to show why people can connect the dots with your past to why you’re qualified for that future role. But I think folks can get excited about the fact that you are so passionate about this industry, or position, or whatever you’re gravitating to, I think, using that even as an asset to say, Okay, I’ve done all these things before in the past. And this offers a different flavor of a candidate than you’re probably going to get from someone who just had that role. And so demonstrating why you are the perfect person for this role, why you’re different. And the reason behind your change, too. So this is where honestly, the magic of cover letter comes to play. A lot of folks don’t realize that a cover letter can be used to explain these sorts of things. And even a LinkedIn profile can also showcase some of that personality. You can include all the bells and whistles, volunteer experience, projects, all of those certifications, all of those things that paint a picture of you as the person and not you as whatever position title you held before in the past. So don’t be afraid to be bold, and to be up front with your career change as well.

All right, the last piece of advice is not resume advice at all. And I, I think I would be doing a bad podcast episode if I didn’t cover this. But it’s not just about the resume when it comes to career change. As I mentioned earlier, it could be a completely different ballgame in terms of how people are hired, folks can catch things on a resume that you perhaps didn’t even see because you were able to talk it out with them. But the fourth piece of advice is show them what you got. Show those hiring managers show the people in your desired industry show even anyone who has that outside perspective, what your resume looks like and they can give you so much insight that goes beyond the own your own echo chamber when it comes to this sort of thing.

So start passing your resume around now, even as you’re coming up with different iterations of your document, start passing that thing around and start getting real time feedback, you’re going to have a hard time, just plain and simple. If you just start sending this thing out on LinkedIn, easy apply or just start shooting your resume out to a bunch of random job boards, not only are you going to get the feedback that is going to deliver the results. But that human aspect of getting your resume physically out there in front of the people who can perhaps influence your job search in a positive way that’s going to yield more results than just sitting behind that computer screen. So sit behind the computer screen on a good good deal here. I’m not going to it is 2024, I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s pretty normal. But you need to find a way to get other folks who are either in your targeted industry or folks with a unbiased perspective to look at the document, and to give you feedback and even point you in the right direction. So that’s my fourth piece of advice for career changers.

And I hope this episode was useful for you all, I hope and I pray that you as a job seeker have that momentum to move forward in your career. I wanted to share three mini stories that I thought were awesome. This comes from ink.com about famous career changers in history. I think these are great to visit just because it reminds you that whatever career change that you think you are embarking upon right now that is it’s not so weird. I think that some of these folks that I’ve seen on these lists, I just My mind was blown that they came from something, anything other than what they were made famous for.

So the first one I’ll open up with is Donald Fisher, who was 40 years old and had no experience in retail whatsoever. He and his wife Doris opened up the first GAP in 1969 in San Francisco so we all know GAP and how massive it is and the fact that the person who started a GAP store didn’t work as retail manager or something like that. And any any sort of experience I just think is mind blowing. Y’all can fact check me on this look do, do your own research but this stuff is crazy.

Jonah Peretti is an example of someone who was a middle school teacher. He was teaching kids how to use Microsoft Office. He was a computer science teacher. And he is actually the one who launched BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post in his 30s. Mind you, so what the heck? How do you transition from that what makes you move from education to founding a media site, I can see some of the commonality there. But I just think that this is amazing.

And my favorite example today is Harland Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders was 62 years old when he founded KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken. This was in 1952. So he held odd jobs before this, he wasn’t the chicken man, or working in fast food before this, he add other positions such as gas station operator, I see country lawyer and a railroad worker. So whatever change you think you are too scared to make right now, don’t be afraid. And I know that these were entrepreneurial examples.

You know, I’m not saying you have to go out and start your own thing. There were probably countless examples of folks who didn’t even start their own business who are not famous, who made such a leap. So you can do it. Start with just taking some small action today, I like to look at the resume just because that’s the angle I come from. But take that action today to make your career change happen. And I wish you the best of luck and everything that you do. So this concludes this 320th episode of the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. I hope I can have you all connect with me on LinkedIn. Just let me know who you are and the connection request and I will accept and of course.

When you are in the market for a resume service, who’s going to take good care of you, you can go to letseatgrandma.com or just Google Let’s Eat, Grandma and set up a free phone call with us. Take care and I hope you have an amazing rest of your week like a rear warrior podcast.

And before you go remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention. You’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast. Thanks and I’ll see you next time.