Career Changes Are More Common Than You Think
People change career at every stage of working life. Whether you're moving from teaching to UX design, retail management to project management, or the military to civilian life, the challenge is the same: how do you convince an employer you can do a job you've never done before?
The answer is in how you frame your CV.
The Biggest Mistake Career Changers Make
Many career changers write their CV as if they're applying for their current role. They list responsibilities from their existing industry using industry-specific language that means nothing to their target employer.
The fix is to translate your experience into the language of your target role.
Step 1: Identify Your Transferable Skills
Every role develops skills that cross industry boundaries. Common transferable skills include:
- Project management — planning, scheduling, resource allocation, deadlines
- People management — hiring, training, performance reviews, conflict resolution
- Communication — presentations, reports, stakeholder management, negotiations
- Problem solving — analysis, troubleshooting, process improvement, decision making
- Budget management — forecasting, cost control, procurement, financial reporting
- Customer focus — client relationships, satisfaction, retention, feedback handling
Step 2: Rewrite Your Summary for the Target Role
Your summary should bridge your past and your future. Lead with what you're moving towards, not what you're leaving.
Bad: "Experienced retail manager looking to transition into project management."
Good: "Operations professional with 8 years of experience managing teams of 15+, coordinating multi-site projects, and delivering against tight deadlines and budgets. PRINCE2 Foundation certified. Seeking a project coordinator role where I can apply my planning, stakeholder management, and team leadership skills in a new context."
There is another career changer example in our CV personal statement examples.
Step 3: Reframe Your Experience
You don't need to lie or exaggerate. You need to emphasise the aspects of your current role that are relevant to your target role.
Example — Retail Manager applying for Project Manager:
- Before: "Managed daily store operations and staff scheduling"
- After: "Coordinated daily operations across a team of 20, managing shift scheduling, resource allocation, and KPI tracking to deliver consistently against monthly revenue targets"
Step 4: Fill the Gaps
If you're missing qualifications or specific experience, address it proactively:
- Get a relevant certification — Even a short online course shows commitment
- Volunteer or freelance — Any relevant experience, even unpaid, counts
- Personal projects — Built a website? Managed an event? Include it
- Training and courses — Show you're actively upskilling
Step 5: Use the Right Format
Career changers often benefit from a skills-based CV format rather than a strictly chronological one. This puts your transferable skills front and centre before revealing your specific job history. A hybrid layout (a short key skills section above a normal reverse-chronological work history) gives you the same benefit while keeping your timeline clear, which many recruiters prefer. Our CV format guide explains the options.
Your cover letter does the rest of the explaining: see our cover letter examples, including one for a career change.
Get Expert Feedback
Career change CVs are tricky to get right on your own. Check yours free on CV Mojo: add the role you're moving into and see, in about 30 seconds, what's holding your CV back. Members can review it too.