Every day it seems like there’s a new headline about some company laying off thousands of people. These layoffs that started in 2022 and don’t seem to be stopping any time soon have been focused particularly on the tech, media, and finance industries. As a result, the job market is now flooded with people looking for work, and it’s a fairly common sight to see jobs posted to LinkedIn 10 minutes earlier that already have over 100 applicants, and that number can quickly run into the thousands. It can feel incredibly demoralizing trying to figure out how you can stand out from the crowd, no matter how many connections you have, services you hire, or new certifications you earn. A lot of people are also becoming disillusioned with the path they have chosen, especially if they’ve found themselves caught up in rounds of layoffs at multiple companies.
As a result, a lot of people are considering transitioning their career into a different department or industry where there might be less competition, or where they might find more work-life balance and enjoyment in their role. Even for those who are not currently out of work, it is not uncommon to want to adjust your career path, and it can be difficult to figure out how to break into a new role, especially if you are several years into your career and don’t want to have to start over from the bottom rung of the ladder. This is not uncommon, as almost half of the tech layoffs in 2022-2023 affected those in the age range of 30-40.
It is fairly common knowledge by now that you need to tailor your resume and cover letter for each job you apply to. But if you’re attempting to move to a new type of job, it can be difficult to figure out how to show that your experience is not just relevant, but an asset, and just why it makes you the perfect candidate for the role.
You Have Skills and Experience You’re Not Giving Yourself Credit For
When you describe your previous roles, it’s important to discuss outcomes rather than list a series of tasks. This gives you a great opportunity to pick the outcome that best supports the role you are applying for, since almost every project has multiple types of outcomes and skills used. For instance, if the role you’re applying for specifically mentions mentoring or training entry-level colleagues, but you’ve never had a management position, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have relevant experience. Have you ever been asked to partner with a more junior person on a project in order to show them the ropes? Did you do any training when new people joined your team? Call out those experiences in your resume and/or cover letter. It might not have been in the strict definition of your job title, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important experience that can show you have the skills you need. So rather than discussing the specific project you worked on, discuss the way you helped the others around you in order to achieve success.
Another skill that frequently comes up is working with customers, especially in customer service-related roles, like customer success managers or account managers. You might think you don’t have relevant experience here, but you probably have more than you realize. Did you participate in any customer interviews? Use data collected from customers to inform the choices you made in your work? Did you ever partner with someone in sales or customer success by providing them with a demo or some other thing they need to present to a client? Think back at the different work you’ve done, and the ways in which the customer may have intersected with it, and then shape your description of your work to include those experiences.
Your Differences Are Your Strengths
The good thing about changing your career path is that you bring skills others might not have. Two of the most frequently requested skills are communication and collaboration, no matter what type of job you are applying for. Let’s say that you were a software engineer and you are now applying for a product management role that requires you to work with many different departments. In a case like this you can confidently say that you have extensive experience communicating with engineers and that you will be a great bridge between them and other departments in the company. Being able to successfully communicate in different ways with people who have different backgrounds in order to make sure you come to a mutual understanding is an amazing skill to bring with you into your new role.
Another set of skills that frequently appear in job requirements are organization, multi-tasking, and prioritization. If you haven’t been the lead on a project you might think you don’t have much experience here, but that’s not the case. Again, think about the work that you’ve done and think about it from the perspective of the skill. Did you ever have to make decisions about what to do first? Delegate tasks to others? Work with others to come up with a shared schedule or roadmap for the work you’re doing?
For those in the tech sector, it’s more than likely that you have experience with some kind of Agile work, whether it’s scrum, kanban, XP, or any of the other numerous frameworks that have been developed. Think about the principles of these ways of working and how the work you did fits into that – you are a customer-first, results-oriented, collaborative and flexible team player. Think backwards from that to the work you’ve done and how it fits into those categories. You won’t just be proving to the hiring manager that you have the skills that are necessary, you’ll be proving it to yourself.
Let Jobalope’s resume and cover letter tools help you identify what skills to highlight and how to incorporate them into your application. You can also check out our skills library to better understand what a certain skill means in the role you’re looking for.
