Changing Jobs? Get the right skills on your CV now
Are you planning to change job, industry or sector and need to revamp your CV? Maybe jobs in your current industry have reduced or disappeared due to the global pandemic and you are thinking of a complete career pivot? When rewriting your CV to target new roles avoid describing your previous experience like a shopping list of duties or responsibilities. To get your CV noticed by employers focus instead on describing what you’ve done in terms of the skills you have demonstrated.
Why Assess Skills?
- If you don’t know the full list of skills you have, how can you expect an employer to see them or know which jobs you may be suitable for?
- Start with a blank slate and spend time identifying skills you’ve developed in your previous roles. You can then turn these into transferable skills on your CV .
What are Transferable Skills?
- Transferable Skills are the ability to do something well that can be applied to a variety of roles or occupations
- By describing your experience in this way, an employer will get a much better idea of what you’ve done to date and what you can bring to this new role. For example:
For example:
If you are trying to make a move from Retail into Logistics or a Customer Success role, an employer might wonder how your previous experience of working in retail is a fit for their role. But so much of what you did while working in retail is also extremely relevant to this new role. When describing what your retail role involved tell them about your:
- Communication skills (dealing with the public)
- Learning IT systems (till, stock management, ordering systems)
- Ability to follow stringent health and safety protocols
- Contributing to a team working (supporting colleagues and helping out)
Using skills based descriptions to show what you did in the role will make your retail experience seems far more relevant. For example:
“Demonstrated excellent communication and problem solving skills when interacting with over 300 customers each day”
sounds much more compelling than….
“Served customers”
How to get started. Assessment Template:
Use the template below to get you thinking about how to translate your daily tasks into your set of transferable skills
This approach will ensure that your CV tells them what you did and how well you did it, with evidence, rather than just listing what your tasks were
Step 1 – List the tasks/ actions you do in your current job
Step 2 – Consider any achievements or feedback you’ve been given previously
Step 3 – Work with this list to identify/translate your work tasks into transferable skills.
Step 4 – Use these skills based descriptions of what you did in your job on your CV
Step 5 – Repeat this for each job held !
