Hi whooey,

You need a career change resume thatdemonstrates your transferable skills for your new objective. Consider leadingyour resume with a Qualifications Summary section that mentions your new goaland provides the top reasons why you would excel in your new field. I'm pastingan article on how to identify transferable skills – I hope it helps.

Best wishes,

Kim Isaacs

by Kim Isaacs
Monster Resume Expert

A significant challenge career changers face is preparing a winning resume. Afterall, it's arduous enough when you have ample related experience. Writing thiscrucial document becomes even more painstaking when you're looking to take acompletely new career direction.

Your saving grace: Transferable skills.

What Are Transferable Skills?

Career expert Richard Nelson Bolles pioneered the idea of transferableskills in his perennial bestseller WhatColor Is Your Parachute? A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers.According to Bolles, we are all born with skills we take from job to job. Thesetransferable skills can be broken down into three categories: people(communicating, teaching, coaching and supervising), data (record keeping,researching, translating and compiling data) and things (operatingcomputers/equipment, assembling and repairing).

If you take the time to identify your transferable skills, you can convinceemployers that you have the core skills necessary to excel in your new careerchoice.

Where to Find Transferable Skills

• Job Ads: Search for your target job on Monster, and review the skills it requires. You may not possess all of them, but look for skills that are somehow related to those you developed via another career, hobby or educational pursuit.

For example, a teacher transitioning to sales mightfind that presentation, organizationaland interpersonal skills are desirable for salespeople. She could thenhighlight her experience giving daily group presentations, creating andlaunching educational programs, and building team morale. All of these areexamples of transferable skills you may overlook, because they come easily toyou.

• Occupational Information Network (O*NET): This site provides a keyword search tool that lists job skills based on career field. Search the list for those of your skills you can transfer to your new industry, and check out this list of all-purpose skills.
• Industry Networking: Speak with workers in your desired field, read trade publications, study employer Web sites, network at industry events and connect with industry associations to learn which skills are important. Once you have a good understanding of desirable skills, you'll know which ones to emphasize.

Identify Your Transferable Skills

Career coach Christine Edick works closely with her career-change clients toidentify transferable skills. In one exercise, she asks them to create a chartof old job skills, new job skills and transferable skills. "Most clientsfind that they have at least 50 percent of transferable skills needed for theirnew job," she says. The following chart can help you map your transferableskills:

Show Your Transferable Skills

Demonstrate you're qualified for your career change byprominently displaying your transferable skills on your resume."Showcasing transferable skills upfront helps the human reader see thekeywords they are looking for, and then they can look to other parts of theresume for more details," Edick says.

Your transferable skills may be included as a key skills list within your qualificationssummary. You can lead with a statement like, "Highlights of my relatedskills include:" followed by a bulleted list of your transferable skills.When creating your Monsterresume, you can use the Skillssection in the Monster Resume Builder to list skills.

Back up your transferable skills by including examples of how yousuccessfully used the skills in another career field or other experience. Edickuses the CAR (challenge, actions, results) approach by asking her clients:

• Challenge: What were some of the challenges you faced?
• Actions: What actions did you take to overcome the challenges?
• Results: What were the results of your work?

"That way, career changers build confidence that the basic skills theydeveloped in one career transfer to a new career," Edick says. The CARstories can be added to a key accomplishmentssection to demonstrate previous success using these transferable skills.