Resume & LinkedIn: How to Highlight Your Old and New Careers
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
When people are career changers, especially after working in one field for a while, they run into a dilemma about how to manage their resume and LinkedIn profile. Here’s how to do it.
Isn’t Interview Preparation Overrated?
Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, and people hire me for no BS job search coaching and career advice globally, because I make the process of finding work and succeeding it much easier.
Someone wants to know how they show their old career and their new career in their resume and LinkedIn profile. To be more specific, they are someone with 30 years in their original career made a change to something new. And it’s been on that new field for five, six years. What do you do?
And the answer is you start to minimize the old stuff, the stuff from your first career, and you do it, not to hide it but you don’t want to be found and reached out to based upon that experience.
For example, on LinkedIn, remember, recruiters are searching LinkedIn, and they’re searching different places to find people to fill jobs. And they’re using keywords to find you. Let’s say you are an accountant and you did that for 30 years. Now you’ve been doing something completely different. You’ve been a, I don’t know, event planner. You want to be found for event planning. And they’re searching for terms related to your accounting experience. You don’t want to get found for that. You want to get found for event planning. So you start zeroing out a lot of your content. And given the fact that you worked in your old field for 30 years, you probably have quite a few paragraphs of information there, both on your resume and your LinkedIn profile. On your resume, you might specifically say, “Prior experience was as an accountant for different organizations, including . . . ” and you list those firms there, as long as there aren’t too many of them where I was involved . . .where I worked as an accountant for . . . ” I don’t want to say 30 years, but I worked as an accountant.
On your LinkedIn profile since the dates are there, you want to minimize the description that you have and cut it back from let’s say 10 paragraphs that you have on LinkedIn to one or two. And you don’t try and include a lot of keywords in there because you want to don’t want to be searched and found in either case.
You could put in much more detail about the current work, about your event planning background, for example, and minimize the information about your old career so that recruiters aren’t reaching out the for the wrong job, and have an expectation that you have experience doing something that you don’t want to be doing.
I hope you found this helpful. I’m Jeff Altman. My website is JobSearch.Community. Go to the site, there’s a ton there that will help you. There’s some free material on the homepage. Plus, if you become an insider, there’s a lot more available to you there and I’ll answer your job search questions. If you become an Insider+ member, you get all of that plus you get me on two Zoom calls a month. And if you become an insider Premium member, you get all the previous stuff and we do either group or individual coaching. Have a terrific day and most importantly, be great!
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS Career Advice globally because he makes many things in peoples’ careers
easier. Those things can involve job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, career transition, as well as advice about resolving workplace issues.
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2800 episodes.
You will find great info to help with your job search at my new site, JobSearch.Community Besides the video courses, books and guides, I answer questions from members daily about their job search. Leave job search questions and I will respond daily. Become an Insider+ member and you get everything you’d get as an Insider PLUS you can get me on Zoom calls to get questions answered. Become an Insider Premium member and we do individual and group coaching.
Also, subscribe to JobSearchTV.com on YouTube and No BS Job Search Advice Radio, the #1 podcast for job search with more than 2700 episodes over 12+ years.in Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play, Amazon Music and almost anywhere you listen or watch podcasts.
You can also have your #jobsearchquestions answered Tuesdays at noon Eastern. Search for Career Coach Office Hours on LinkedIn and mark that you’re attending. You’ll have access to the recording if you miss it live.
Schedule a discovery call to speak with me about coaching you during your job search at www.TheBigGameHunter.us to discuss one-on-one or group coaching with me
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter
Resume & LinkedIn Profile critiques www.TheBigGameHunter.us/critiques
We grant permission for this post and others to be used on your website as long as a backlink is included to www.TheBigGameHunter.us and notice is provided that it is provided by Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter as an author or creator. Not acknowledging his work or providing a backlink to www.TheBigGameHunter.us makes you subject to a $1000 penalty which you proactively agree to pay.
