{"id":717,"date":"2017-09-26T11:13:47","date_gmt":"2017-09-26T15:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.darden.virginia.edu\/careercorner\/?p=717"},"modified":"2021-08-27T18:09:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T22:09:21","slug":"when-and-how-to-transition-to-a-mid-career-resume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.darden.virginia.edu\/careercorner\/2017\/09\/26\/when-and-how-to-transition-to-a-mid-career-resume\/","title":{"rendered":"When and How to Transition to a Mid-Career Resume"},"content":{"rendered":"

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O<\/span>ne of the most common reasons that alumni contact us in Alumni Career Services is to update their resumes. Many times post-graduation, alumni take the resume they developed with the Career Development Center while on Grounds and add each new job on to it. However, MBA alumni should be transitioning their resumes to the mid-career format after graduation.\u00a0 Earlier this year, we unveiled a new resume style guide<\/a> that leads alumni through the key components of a resume.<\/p>\n

Before getting into the tactical pieces of the mid-career resume, the most important thing to remember about your resume is that its purpose is to gain a meeting or an interview with a decision maker. While it seems obvious, try to remember that a resume is a marketing material and not an autobiography.\u00a0 It can be very difficult to part with the 20 bullets that you had prior to Darden about your jobs in wealth management, but if you are now a consultant turned hospitality executive then it\u2019s time to shave down the wealth management experience to the few bullets that are now relevant.<\/p>\n

As you will see on the resume style guide<\/a>, all mid-career resumes also start with a career summary. This is probably the most important piece of the resume because it\u2019s often the only part of your resume that someone reads. The career summary is usually 3-5 sentences and highlights the experiences and skills that you bring to the target job that the person reading would feel are important. Generally, people will give themselves a title either above the career summary in bold or in the first sentence that marries your current position and experience with the target role.\u00a0 For example, if you have been a strategy consultant specializing in health care and retail clients and you have decided to transition to an internal role in the health care industry then your title would likely be something like Health Care Strategy Executive (leaving out your retail expertise because it\u2019s not relevant to the target role).<\/p>\n

If you are applying for roles that request specific \u201chard\u201d skills, then underneath the career summary, a table of bullets that lists the specific skills that you bring is also very helpful to the reader.<\/p>\n

Other major changes you\u2019ll notice from your CDC on-Grounds resume when you transition to the mid-career resume include:<\/p>\n