Create the perfect resume for your midlife career change
By Julie Farthing, FAACC, Principal Consultant,
Career Dimensions
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If you are over 45 and looking for work, chances are you fit into one of these categories:
- You are a parent returning to the mainstream workforce after several years' absence.
- You have found yourself out of work because your industry has moved offshore or closed down, or your skills are no longer needed.
- You have been working in casual positions, in low skilled areas and are finding it increasingly difficult to find work.
- You have worked in the same occupation or industry for a long time and have become bored or frustrated.
- You are looking for a new challenge or want to develop a latent interest.
See if you know the answer to these two questions:
- Which of these groups of career changers is most likely to succeed in finding a good job?
Answer: All of them!
- Which of these groups has to work hardest in order to find a good job?
Answer: None – recognising the need to work hard and to cope with temporary setbacks has to be a part of everyone’s career change strategy.
Contrary to what you might think, the over-45s who have the greatest success in getting work are those who have a clear understanding of what they want and the motivation to succeed. Creating a meaningful future has surprisingly little to do with a person’s work history, yet many of us spend time worrying about what we have or haven’t done in our working lives, and blame ourselves when things go wrong. This attitude often leads to a poorly presented résumé, and is a real turn-off for employers and recruiters.
The résumés that attract attention are those that reflect a person who is honest and thorough about their past, and who is confident and capable of taking on a new working role. The résumés that stir doubts are those that provide incomplete or scanty work histories and that give no indication of the person’s unique skills set or their career goals.
For this reason, and many others, developing your midlife career change résumé needs to happen alongside some serious career planning. These two activities go hand in hand – if you do one without the other you are likely to find it difficult to find work and/or be competitive against other candidates.
With this in mind, you can avoid making these BIG mistakes:
- Handing over control of your résumé to another party. This is your résumé, and you should be an active participant in its creation. You are the one who will need to justify what is written on it in an interview, and your personality, not the resume writer’s, must show through. Certainly get some expert help and advice, but be very wary of anyone offering to provide you with resume in 24 hours or for which your input is limited to answering a questionnaire.
- Using the same résumé for every job you apply for. A résumé is a dynamic document, just as position descriptions are all different. At the very least you need a master résumé (which includes everything) and a range of résumés highlighting different skills sets.
Use this table below to identify ways in which you can use your career planning process to highlight your positive attributes and create a winning resume:
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Career planning exercise |
In your résumé you can show you have done this by … |
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Identify work interests and being clear about how, when and where you want to work
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creating a positive, realistic, but not too limiting “Career Objective” that immediately tells the reader you are not just going through the motions; rather you have searched carefully and have especially selected their job as suitable for you
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List transferable skills and identify skills gaps (obtained through work and/or other activities)
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displaying your employment skills under functional headings that reflect the total person you are, such as “Management”, “Communication”, “IT”, and industry specific skills
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Undertake training to address skill deficiencies |
itemising short courses or longer training programs in which you have learnt new skills that can be applied to the workplace
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Map employment history on a timeline that incorporates all past positions
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presenting your past working life in a concise but complete format that accounts for gaps, a number of short term jobs etc. without highlighting a less than perfect history. For example, people who have had many jobs might list these under “Functional” headings rather than in chronological order
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Understand how your job/career complements your lifestyle and life goals
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listing achievements, extra activities, memberships, clubs etc. in a way that adds value to what you have done in the workplace and highlights your uniqueness as an individual
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Identify people who will support you while you are planning your career change and looking for a job. |
providing referees from a range of sources (such as tutors/teachers, school principals, community leaders etc.), especially if you don’t have work referees |
If you are unsure as to how to undertake the various career planning activities or how to create your résumé, a career counsellor can help. Find one by going to the Australian Association of Career Counsellors website.
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