Don’t Start Your Career Change With Your CV
By Satu Kreula
The amount of people who want to give me their CV as a basis for their career change/shift is really high. At first I thought I'd missed a trick, and just recently did I consciously realise why I felt uneasy about this as a starting point.
Your CV is your story up to this date. But until you know where you're going, how do you know what part of your story to tell? Many clients feel uneasy at this point. At some level I think they initially feel that I'm asking them to lie. Far from it.
If you think about it, a CV is usually only two pages long. There is no way you'll be able to put in everything, so you'll have to choose. That's not lying. That's telling the reader (read: potential employer) what's relevant for them to know. They don't need to know everything you've done. They need (want) to know if what you have done in the past is interesting enough that it is worth having a further conversation with you (read: interview) about the future.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. If you know that what you want to do next is not what you've done before, then your CV is definitely not the place to start. The right place to start is to figure out what it is that you want to do next.
What happens if you are not quite sure of your next step? Or what if you have a few ideas, but they're quite different? Do not, I repeat, do not, try to get conversations with people in very distinct fields with the same CV. It won't work. It's like trying to advertise the same holiday to both parents with young kids and twenty-something singles - neither one is going to bite. So make sure you have several tailored CVs to the various areas you are interested in.
But what if you don't know what areas you are interested in. Don't worry about your CV. Worry about starting to research and explore different areas. Write down the ones you think you might be interested in and find out more about them. You don't need a CV for this. You need to just get out there and have conversations with people - or even just use the internet as a starting point. You can figure out what your skills and strengths are so you have an idea of what you can offer when you are asked what you are good at and enjoy doing. Once you've moved forward with your research and become clearer on a few areas that really strike your fancy - then get cracking on your CVs to start the job searching/interviewing process.
The amount of people who want to give me their CV as a basis for their career change/shift is really high. At first I thought I'd missed a trick, and just recently did I consciously realise why I felt uneasy about this as a starting point.
Your CV is your story up to this date. But until you know where you're going, how do you know what part of your story to tell? Many clients feel uneasy at this point. At some level I think they initially feel that I'm asking them to lie. Far from it.
If you think about it, a CV is usually only two pages long. There is no way you'll be able to put in everything, so you'll have to choose. That's not lying. That's telling the reader (read: potential employer) what's relevant for them to know. They don't need to know everything you've done. They need (want) to know if what you have done in the past is interesting enough that it is worth having a further conversation with you (read: interview) about the future.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. If you know that what you want to do next is not what you've done before, then your CV is definitely not the place to start. The right place to start is to figure out what it is that you want to do next.
What happens if you are not quite sure of your next step? Or what if you have a few ideas, but they're quite different? Do not, I repeat, do not, try to get conversations with people in very distinct fields with the same CV. It won't work. It's like trying to advertise the same holiday to both parents with young kids and twenty-something singles - neither one is going to bite. So make sure you have several tailored CVs to the various areas you are interested in.
But what if you don't know what areas you are interested in. Don't worry about your CV. Worry about starting to research and explore different areas. Write down the ones you think you might be interested in and find out more about them. You don't need a CV for this. You need to just get out there and have conversations with people - or even just use the internet as a starting point. You can figure out what your skills and strengths are so you have an idea of what you can offer when you are asked what you are good at and enjoy doing. Once you've moved forward with your research and become clearer on a few areas that really strike your fancy - then get cracking on your CVs to start the job searching/interviewing process.
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By rob.geraghty on 22 December 2006 at 16:49