Get The Job You Want: How to tailor Your Resume and show off your transferable skills inventory for Career Change

The decision to change jobs can be one of the most stressful decisions a person will ever make. It is so much easer to stay in the environment we know than to step into an uncertain future, besides going through all the work of rewriting your resume to get a different job. Changing jobs often means we are starting over again, learning a new work place, proving ourselves and our skills to a new employer.

If that decision involves not just a different job, but a career change, then life has become even more stressful. Fortunately, there are now a myriad of resources online to help you decide what careers might best suit you. As well, there a resources that can help you succeed in that new career.

There are two main elements that will help a job-seeker create the best resume for a successful career change. The first of these is research.

Most people will devote a lot of thought to changing careers. They will consider how the change will affect their families, their life-style, and their financial circumstances. They will also consider what advantages they may have in their choice of a new career.

Research into the chosen career field is essential. You need to first of all, make sure that you have the skills to carry out the job.

Then, the task becomes one of showcasing skill sets from one job, your transferable skills, in such a way that a potential employer can see how they would be useful in the job you are seeking.

Research is critical to any job-search, as it will tell you what skills the employer is looking for in any given job. If you are seeking to change careers, you will need to find out what skills are required that match up with your current skills, and, as well, investigate the possibility of investing in training.

When you do your homework on the companies that have jobs available in your chosen career, that you find out where the jobs are - are you willing to relocate if there are no jobs available in your area? As well, find out about the "culture" of the company - are you likely to fit in well?

Research will not only show what job paths within that career could be available to you, given your current skill set, it will also help you to more effectively target your resume towards the job.

The second key to successful career change is transferable skills . These are the skills that you take with you from one job to the next.

If you have learned how to do payroll for one firm, you have learned or developed a certain skill set of accounting skills. Chances are with some training on an unfamiliar system, you will be able to use those skills to do payroll for another firm. Your accounting skills are transferable to another job.

If, as a volunteer, you have trained new volunteers in protocols and procedures, and supervised them in their every-day tasks, then you have learned or developed skills in teaching, mentoring, leadership, and supervision that can be transferred to another volunteer position, or even transferred to a paying position.

You can see that the skill sets are the same, though the environment where you use the skills may change.

Examples of highly desirable transferable skills, skills that are sought after in a wide variety of jobs, are: verbal and written communication skills, people management skills, project management skills, customer service skills, organizational skills, research skills, and marketing skills.

It is your task to highlight those skills you have that will be valuable in another job. Merely stating what you have done is not enough.

You must identify the skills that you used in those other tasks, so that the potential employer can see that you not only have usable skills, you understand enough about the position you are applying for to show how those skills will be useful in that new job.

In addition to your resume, the cover letter or email that accompanies your resume can be a useful tool in your career change. It can help indicate to a potential employer your enthusiasm and interest in the change in a genuine, yet professional manner, and can illustrate the close link between your transferable skills and your new career choice.

The employer is not interested in all your personal reasons for the change, they simply need to know that this is not a whim, nor a spur of the moment decision. Your research and the way your address the skills you have that fit the job - your transferable skills - will go a long way towards helping make a successful career change.

© 2010, Text by Imelleda, All rights reserved