There is no reason to feel awkward about your mixed work history; you just need to know how to spin it in a way that will benefit your next career step. Freelance workers, parents going back to work after raising small children, people changing careers, and individuals with a wide range of experiences are generally better prepared for their new job than they think. The problem is always in how they choose to communicate it.
Creating a solid career storyline creates continuity within your professional experience. By creating an organized career storyline, a hiring manager will be able to visualize your journey from one place to another. In doing this, you create an environment that shows them exactly why you want to make your next career move and why you will be great in this chosen career.
Start With the Role You Want Next
Before you rewrite your resume or LinkedIn profile, decide on your career narrative. It will be most effective if focused on a specific career path. If you have not chosen a specific career path, it will be very difficult to find your career narrative. No narrative means each past experience you have will be competing for space.
Identify three to five job postings for jobs you actually care about. Look at the recurring skills, tasks, and results of those roles. You need to find patterns. The patterns you identify will help guide the content of your career narrative and how to update your resume.
Find the Thread Running Through Your Experience
You should be able to find an underlying theme even if your job experiences don’t look like they are all related. You may solve customer problems over and over again, or manage employees, deal with stress, organize chaos, sell ideas, train others on how to do things, write for publications, or keep operations moving smoothly.
Once you identify this “thread” through your past employment, your entire job history will start looking much more intentional than it did before.
Lead With Transferable Skills
Your transferable skills are important to employers because they help them see how you will apply your prior work experience to solve their present-day problems.
An AI Resume Builder can be helpful in helping you find repeated patterns of your skills, tighten your language, and create connections from your previous positions to your desired position. Just remember, you still need to use your own judgment even if you have a powerful tool on your side. Use an AI resume builder as a framework or template, but also take the time to personalize the content and format so that the output looks and reads like you and actually represents your experience as an individual.
Group Experience When It Makes Sense
When you have been working on a freelance basis or for short periods of time in many different positions, it is common to list all of these experiences as if they are equally important. Unfortunately, the final result will appear as if you have been jumping from one job to another – never a good sign for permanent employment.
Group together similar types of experience – writing, administration, consulting – and put them under a single, clearly defined job title. Examples include “Client Freelance Writing,” “Client Freelance Administration,” or “Client Freelance Consulting.” These groupings help create organization within your resume, making it easier to follow.
Explain Career Gaps With Confidence
The biggest challenge is often getting past your career gaps. A simple, steady explanation usually works best. Parenting, caregiving, study, relocation, freelance work, health recovery, or personal responsibilities can be framed without apology.
You can say you took time away from full-time work and are now ready to return with a clear focus. Then move straight into the skills and experience you bring.
Via Unsplash
Build a Strong Summary Section
You have many opportunities to control your story on your resume, but one of the best places is in the summary.
Keep the summary concise by describing the direction you would like to go, what past experiences will help support that direction, and what value you bring to the table.
If you’ve been out of the workforce for a while and are trying to get back into the job market, you’ll want to develop a summary that ties together your past experience to the type of position you’re looking at now.
An example of this would be if a former teacher wanted to transition into corporate training. In the summary, they can highlight creating lesson plans, presenting ideas clearly, managing groups, and modifying content based on the audience.
This creates logic around the career change and reduces concern about the individual’s background.
The summary should answer one simple question for the reader: “Why does this person make sense for this role?”
Choose the Right Details
The details on your resume should be supportive of the role you are applying for. Meaning some experiences get more space than others.
Your first admin job from 10 years ago needs two lines, while your recent freelance project that matches the role you are applying for deserves more detail.
Bring the Story Into Interviews
Your career narrative can be used as part of your response to interview questions. When someone asks you about your background, use it to connect your past to what will happen in your next step.
For example, when asked about your background, here is one possible way you could respond:
“My experience includes working with customers, freelancing in administrative work, and coordinating teams. The common theme through my experiences has consistently been helping people and improving the efficiency of processes. This is why I believe this operations role is where I am best suited at this time in my career.”
The answer seems clear, and you exactly know where you are heading.
Your Career Story Can Be Stronger Than It Looks
If your work history is a bit messy, you need a solid plan to tell your story. Choose your narrative and clearly highlight your transferable skills. That makes your background easier to understand.
A perfect timeline does not equal a perfect candidate. Your skills might be just right for a position because you have more experience across the board. It is just a matter of displaying your skills and strengths in a way that easily translates to the position you are applying for.