Daily Archives: January 16, 2024

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Writing a career change resume can be tricky. How can you effectively market yourself to employers in a different industry when you don't have nearly enough experience as the average candidate applying for the same job as you?

If you're looking to make a career change, optimizing your resume becomes even more important than it normally is. It's also critical to write a disruptive cover letter and make strategic networking and intentional branding the priority.

Follow these five tips for an effective career change resume so you can land your dream job in a new industry.

1. Create An Interview Bucket List

An interview bucket list is a list of 10-20 companies you'd love to work for. Before beginning your job search as a career changer, having an interview bucket list is a must.

How can you identify the right companies to add to your interview bucket list? Well, it's simpler than it sounds. Think about the companies you admireâfor their mission, the product or service they provide, or both. Then, determine whether you could find an opportunity at these companies that aligns with your career change goals.

When creating your interview bucket list, you're ultimately looking for companies you connect with. Why are you passionate about working for them? Tell that connection story in your disruptive cover letter. Then, you'll be able to tailor your resume for specific job openings at these companies, customizing it for each position that you apply for. This leads to our next tip for a career change resume...

2. Highlight Your Transferable Skills

Transferable skills are hard skills that are in demand across many different roles and industries. As a career changer, highlighting your transferable skills on your resume is the key to looking as qualified as possible for the position you're applying for.

Never include soft skills on your resume. It doesn't matter whether you're changing careers or not. Soft skills cannot be quantified. Therefore, they do not belong on your resume.

For example, "detail-oriented" is a soft skill, and "project management" is a transferable skill. You may not have experience managing the types of projects in the industry you're looking to get a job in, but if you have the skill, you'll likely be able to transition into a role that requires project management smoothly.

3. Focus On Your Accomplishments

In the "Work History" section of your resume, you'll want to focus on what you accomplished in previous roles, keeping your transferable skills in mind. For each role you list, you should have at least three bullet points detailing your quantifiable accomplishments.

Employers want to see what you accomplished in your previous roles and how those accomplishments could translate to success in their industry. They don't care what your tasks or responsibilities were. That won't tell them the value you provide as a business-of-one.

What accomplishments are you most proud of in your career? Write those down. Hiring managers will probably be impressed by them too.

4. Avoid Irrelevant Information

Any irrelevant information you include on your career change resume will hurt your chances of getting an interview. Hiring managers spend only seconds reviewing each resume that comes across their desk. If they can't easily identify relevant information, they'll assume you aren't qualified for the position and toss your resume.

Only including relevant information on your resume will be difficult if you're changing careers. But if you follow the tips above, you should be on the right track.

5. Use The "Additional Experience" Section To Your Advantage

The "Additional Experience" section of your resume is the perfect place to showcase more relevant work or volunteer experience for the industry you're looking to switch to.

Did you volunteer at an organization within the same industry? Have you worked on special projects that involved the industry in some way? This section is where you should include any remaining relevant information you believe makes you qualified for the job you're applying for.

These five tips will help you write an effective career change resume. Just remember the importance of strategic networking and intentional branding in your job search as well.

To get your resume in front of hiring managers, you'll likely need to go around the ATS and focus on networking your way into companies by connecting with current employees of these companies on LinkedIn. Customizing your resume, writing a disruptive cover letter, and having a solid networking strategy will help you successfully change careers.

Need more help with your career change resume?

Become a member to learn how to land a job and UNLEASH your true potential to get what you want from work!

This article was originally published at an earlier date.

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5 Tips For A Career Change Resume

In the evolving job market, freelancing has emerged as a viable option for students seeking to gain work experience, earn income, and develop a diverse skill set. This article explores the feasibility of students working as freelancers and the opportunities it presents. Gaining Valuable Work Experience One of the primary advantages of freelancing for students […]

The post Should Students Work as Freelancers and What Are the Opportunities? appeared first on Jobacle.com.

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Itâs a normal workday, and then suddenly the fire alarm goes off in the back of the server room. Amidst the chaos, do the IT staff know what theyâre supposed to do besides call 911 and make sure everyone is safe? A comprehensive IT disaster recovery (DR) plan is your playbook. It defines the IT infrastructure and how to restore and resume critical IT functions minimizing the impact on the business including downtime, data loss, and reputational damage.

Start by performing a risk assessment identifying key threats and vulnerabilities to your IT infrastructure including hardware/software failure, cyberattacks, natural disasters, and major power outages. What is the likelihood of each incident and the subsequent impact (enterprise-wide, regional, department-specific, etc.) for your organization? Now you can prioritize your recovery efforts accordingly.

Next, create a comprehensive DR plan that includes the who, what, where, when, why, and how details. For example:

Who = What are the main roles and responsibilities including identifying any essential IT staff? For example, did you have any IT staff turnover? Youâll need to notify stakeholders such as management, vendors, and suppliers so you need the correct contact information.
What = Which systems are mission critical, essential, and non-essential? Criticality will define the order of recovery and ensure that the most critical systems are restored first.
Where = Do you have global data centers or IaaS? A hot site or an alternate cloud-based infrastructure for temporary operations?
How = Step-by-step procedures for recovering systems, identifying which processes need to be done in a specific order.

Backup And Recovery Strategy

âYou need a solid backup and recovery strategy. Perform regular backups including software, configurations, and data. Backups can be onsite, offsite, cloud-based, or a combination depending on the business needs. For mission-critical systems, it may be beneficial to implement redundancy (e.g., deploying backup systems, or redundant hardware) to minimize the impact of an incident.

The IT environment and the business are continually changing so the DR plan needs to be kept current too. Make sure you regularly review, update, and refine the plan to make sure it reflects any changes in your environment. Did you implement a new ERP system or relocate your data center? Or did you have any technology changes that improve the recovery process or enhance the resilience of your systems? If so, you should take the time to update your DR plan.

Testing Your DR Plan

Business meeting to talk about disaster recovery plan

Make sure you regularly test the DR plan which will validate recovery procedures, identify gaps, and ensure data such as stakeholder contact information is correct. There are multiple ways to test including tabletop and scenario-based simulation. Tabletops are good, but simulations including recovery are better. Itâs key to test on a regular basis...with the business (that takes your plan to the next level)! The frequency of your testing may vary depending on the criticality of the systems or any regulatory requirements so stay up to date with any regulation changes that may impact your DR plan requirements. Make sure you document lessons learned (including from any actual incidents) so that you can identify any areas for improvement.

Itâs critical to ensure your DR plan is aligned with the business continuity plan. Within the DR plan, there should be a communication component. When an incident occurs, you need protocols to notify and continually update the stakeholders so that they can respond appropriately.

Encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Encourage and solicit feedback for the DR plan. Although IT is responsible for disaster recovery, it affects the entire business continuity plan. Have a comprehensive and current DR plan that aligns with the business needs, and which is tested regularly. It enhances your readiness for the next disaster and minimizes the impact of disruptions to your IT infrastructure as well as minimizing the impact of potential disruptions.

For more information on taking your DR plan from good to great, follow me on LinkedIn!

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Is Your IT Disaster Recovery Plan Good …

The job search is difficult enough for professionals who have years of experience under their belts. So, how do you get a job when you don't have any experience? That's the million-dollar question, and I'm going to answer it for you.

Focus On Connection Points

When you find a job that you want to apply for, some sort of life experience has taught you to want this job. Otherwise, you wouldn't even know what this job is. So, write down what it is about this job that you really want. Where did you learn about this job? Where did you come to find this job that you're very excited about? We have to connect the dots in the story here. Then, write down why you think you're qualified to do this job, even though you don't have any experience. What from your own life or professional experience has made you believe that you are fully capable of doing this job?

You need to write all of this out. These are the connection points between you and the job. These are the connection points that a recruiter and a hiring manager are going to need to hear in order to consider you because sending them your resume or your LinkedIn profile is going to get you tossed because you don't fit the mold.

The story is the factor here. Now, the more powerful the story, the more compelling the reasons that you want to do this job and that you believe you can do this job, the more likely you will get a shot at this job.

Here's a true story to help you understand the power of connection points...

Years ago, I had a young man come to me and he wanted to get into financial planning. However, the first 12 years of his career had been as a paint store manager. It was a successful career but it had nothing to do with financial planning. So when I said to him, "Why do you think you're qualified for financial planning and why do you want to get into it?" he explained that a little over a year ago, his father had died unexpectedly and his dad had owned a business, and they found out after he died that the business was in shambles. He left his mom broke and she was probably not only going to lose the business but lose the home that she had spent all her life in with her husband.

So, what did he do? He spent nights and weekends figuring everything out, teaching himself what he needed to know. He was able to turn around and get the business to a place where he could sell it and get enough money for his mother so that she didn't lose the house and she had something to live on. He said the experience was so traumatic that he never, ever wanted to see another person go through this, and he knew if he could become a financial planner, he could help more people when these unexpected losses hit so they wouldn't have to deal with all the financial stress and drama when they're simultaneously trying to grieve. If that isn't the ultimate motivation to want to become a financial planner!

After he explained all that, we created his career story. I call this career story a connection story. I also refer to it as the disruptive cover letter because it's not a traditional cover letter. I helped him tell the story of how he realized he needed to become a financial planner and also enclosed some of the transferable skills from being a paint store manager that he believed helped him get up to speed so fast and do all that he did for his mom.

He had five financial planning companies on his interview bucket listâfive companies that he would love to work for. He sent his disruptive cover letter off. He networked with all five companies. They gave him interviews. Three gave him offers. And he took the offer from his number one choice.

You can do this too, but the story is going to be what gets your foot in the door and gets people to root for you, to want to give you a chance. Because the upside is when you go into a job that you haven't done before, you have no bad habits. You're very moldable. Also, anybody who gives you a shot, you're going to do everything in your power to exceed their expectations. So there are some clear advantages to hiring somebody who doesn't have the experience.

But they're not going to hire you if you don't have that connection and intrinsic motivation, which is just a fancy word for a really good reason why you're going to get out of bed every day to do that job and figure it out and crush it. That's what they're looking for from you as someone with no experience.

If you would like to learn how to do this step by step, join me inside Work It DAILY today. Sign up for a seven-day free trial and get instant access to my cover letter plan. That is where you're going to learn the power of the connection story.

Good luck, and go get 'em!

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How To Get A Job With No …

The landscape of Information Technology (IT) is perpetually evolving, driven by relentless innovation and a constant stream of emerging technologies. As we look to the future, itâs evident that this field will continue to grow, transform, and offer many opportunities. In this blog, we delve into the emerging roles in IT and provide guidance on […]

The post The Future of IT Jobs: Emerging Roles and How to Prepare appeared first on Jobacle.com.

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