In thinking about how recruiters don’t seem interested in understanding the larger context of your life and why you’re making a career change (as there’s no place to show this on a resume), I wanted to know if there was a way to write a resume to actually show this. In doing so, I found the above article.
Writing, in this example, is a transferable skill. Transferable skills include both hard skills and soft skills, like leadership, time management, multi-tasking, communication, organization, emotional intelligence, listening, research, and many more.
Pro Tip: Include these skills in your work experience section, focusing less on duties and more on the skills you have developed, as these will be of the most interest to the hiring manager.
- Write a resume objective or summary that frames your career change as a strength
Your resume objective or resume summary sections are a great way to convince recruiters that your past experience sets you up as the perfect candidate for the new role. These statements tie in your experience and skills with what your new career demands.
When writing your resume objective, focus on the skills that you’ve picked up throughout your current career and other previous roles and explain how you plan to use them in this new industry.
This last quote is somewhat hilarious because it’s effectively what I’m trying to do with my life as a whole. I’m trying to show how my time building communities of practice (guilds, clans) to help people level up within the imaginary worlds of video games is utilizing similar personal and organizational skills that are needed to create communities of practice to help people to “level up” in life (i.e. vertical development).
It kind of mirrors how John Seely Brown has shown how there is massive innovation occurring within World of Warcraft communities but because they’re gaming communities, people in the business world are completely obviously to it (and probably don’t see it as relatable or transferrable to the world of work).
