Career Change Resume Example
Why a list of transferable skills does not work, and what to do instead.
Almost every career-change resume contains a section headed “Transferable Skills”, and almost none of them work. The reason is worth understanding before you write yours, because the fix is not a better list.
A skills list makes a claim about yourself. “Strong communicator. Adaptable. Skilled at stakeholder management.” The reader cannot check any of it, has read the same three claims forty times today, and knows that anyone can type them. The list asserts where the resume needs to evidence.
The work is not to summarise your old career. It is to describe it in the terms of the new one.
The resume
Claire Bennett Leeds, UK · claire.bennett@example.com · 07700 900318
Summary
Secondary school teacher moving into instructional design. Eight years building and revising curriculum for mixed-ability groups, including the department’s move to a blended delivery model in 2024. Experienced with Articulate Rise, Canvas and accessibility standards for learning materials.
Experience
Head of Science — Northfield Academy, Leeds September 2021 – present
- Designed and maintained the Key Stage 4 science curriculum: 120 hours of material across three ability pathways, revised each year against results data.
- Led the department’s move to blended delivery in 2024 — rebuilt 40 lessons for asynchronous use, with the online and in-person versions kept to the same assessment.
- Ran the exam-results analysis each August and rewrote the weakest units against it; the lowest-performing module moved from 48% to 71% pass over two cycles.
- Trained and mentored six teachers on the new platform, including three who had not taught online before.
Science Teacher — Northfield Academy, Leeds September 2018 – August 2021
- Taught across Key Stages 3 and 4, and wrote the shared scheme of work adopted by the department.
Education
PGCE Secondary Science — University of Leeds, 2018 BSc Biochemistry — University of Manchester, 2017
Skills
Articulate Rise · Canvas LMS · Curriculum design · Assessment design · WCAG 2.2 for learning content · Stakeholder training
Why it is written this way
The same job, written twice
Here is the head-of-department role as it would appear on a teaching resume:
Responsible for the Key Stage 4 science curriculum and for line-managing a department of six teachers.
And here it is on this one:
Designed and maintained the Key Stage 4 science curriculum: 120 hours of material across three ability pathways, revised each year against results data.
Nothing was invented. The same eight years produced both sentences. What changed is which part of the work is in frame: the first is written for a school, the second for someone hiring an instructional designer, who needs to know whether you can build learning material at volume and improve it against evidence.
That is what reframing means, and it is done bullet by bullet. There is no section where it happens.
The vocabulary switches, the facts do not
Scheme of work becomes curriculum design. Results data stays, because outcomes measured against evidence is the thing both fields value and the phrase travels. Blended delivery and asynchronous are already the target industry’s words, and they were already true of the work.
Be careful with this. Translating is legitimate; inflating is not. “Led the department’s move to blended delivery” is defensible in an interview. “Managed digital transformation” is the same sentence with the checkable parts removed, and an interviewer will find that out in one question.
The summary names the destination in its first six words
“Secondary school teacher moving into instructional design.”
A reader who does not know where you are heading will assume the most recent job is the answer, decide you are in the wrong pile, and stop. Stating the target removes that failure in one line, and it is the one place on a career-change resume where a direct claim about yourself earns its space.
The pass-rate number is the strongest line
48% to 71% over two cycles is a measurement of a redesign working. It is the closest thing in the old career to the outcome the new one is hired for, which is why it belongs in the top half of the page.
Look for yours in the same place: the moment where you changed something and could tell afterwards that it had worked.
The skills list is only tools and standards
Six entries, every one of them a system, a standard or a named practice. No adjectives, no “transferable” framing, nothing a reader would have to take on trust.
Note that two of them — Articulate Rise and WCAG 2.2 — come from deliberate preparation rather than from the teaching job. That is the honest way to close a genuine gap in your background: learn the tool, then name it. It is not the same as claiming the years.
On the rest
Bullet phrasing and what to remove from an older resume are covered in the customer service resume example, and the single-column layout choice is explained in how to check if your resume is ATS-friendly.
Build your own a career change resume — pick a template, fill it in, download the PDF. No account, and nothing you type leaves your browser.