Curriculum Vitae

A guide to writing a CV if you are changing career

If you're changing your career, you'll need to give your CV a facelift, too. Clare Whitmell explores how you can tailor the content to land an interview

• Share41

•

•

• Email

• Clare Whitmell

• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 June 2012 17.40 BST

•

It's okay to hop from one job to a completely different one; just adopt a skills-based CV Commissioned For Film And Music Photograph: Alicia Canter

One of the biggest challenges career changers face is demonstrating how their career history is relevant. The key is to downplay a lack of direct experience, while highlighting the skills and accomplishments which apply.

Standard advice for career changers is generally to adopt a functional or skills-based CV: a detailed skills section followed by a briefer experience section. The reasoning behind this is that your reader will be wowed by your 'transferable' skills, skipping over the who, what and how of your work history. But employers often want – and expect – the detail found in a standard chronological CV, and not providing it puts you at a disadvantage. One solution is to develop a 'hybrid' CV with an expanded profile and skills section, and a chronological employment history.

View your career history through an employer's eyes

A successful career-change CV clearly shows how your career path to date is a consistent, natural progression of your talents and interests, leading you to the point where you've amassed the necessary skills and experience for your next move. You can avoid giving the impression that you're a directionless job-hopper or that you're floundering around for a career change by finding an underlying career theme and writing your career history around this. For example, if you're going for a marketing role, select and highlight any marketing elements from previous roles, downplaying all other, less relevant aspects.

Sell your strengths

Show confidence in your abilities. You may be at a...