Thousands of people worldwide decide to change their career dramatically every day. Someone might have been working as an engineer or a healthcare professional and he or she has been doing the job well, but the moment came and they decided to become an IT specialist. Sounds great but it isnt that easy as it seems to appear on the face of it. The first and the main problem appears straight after collecting all the knowledge that is needed for their new job. This problem is a mediocre resume. This articles aim is to help such people have a place in this IT world with these 11 resume writing tips.

1. Do a Serious Rewrite

When youre switching jobs its okay to just revise and update your resume with some relevant info.  However, when youre undergoing a full-blown career change, youll want to reshape your resume so that it demonstrated the full range of the skills you have to offer.  Whether it be specific technical skills or more general, abstract ones such as the ability to lead, manage, and communicate. 

2. Include A Summary Paragraph

Adding an intro summary paragraph to the top of your resume is essential when making a career change.  By tying the job description into your accomplishments, youll give hiring managers a clear view of what you have to offer and will give yourself a much better chance that they dont just do a quick scan of your resume and then push it aside. 

3. Use the Correct Keywords

Identifying keywords is the method hiring managers use when searching for candidates and getting the right ones in your resume is critical.  So when making the big career switch you want to include keywords into your resume that are representative of how you want to be viewed and what your goals are.  As with your accomplishments, you want to insert the keywords near the top of your resume in either the Profile or Summary section; and to make things even easier for whoevers giving the resume a quick look over, you can even list them by bullet points in their own section titles Core Strengths, Core Capabilities, Professional Qualifications or something of that nature. 

4. Perception Is Reality

This might seem obvious, but before you even begin reworking your resume, you want to give serious thought as to where you want to go with your new career and the message or impression youd like a hiring manager to receive when reading your resume over.  Thus, asking yourself such questions as:

• What type of position are you looking for?
• What is the exact industry you wish to enter? 
• What type of image are you attempting to build with your resume rewrite?
• How do you wish a hiring manager or potential employer to perceive you through your resume?

Just like writing a story, youre looking to create a theme to build your resume around that will be the nucleus for the type of information you provide.

Remember, how significant the career change will be a major factor in how dramatically you change your image.  So if youre a public accountant seeking work at as an in-house private accountant, the alterations will probably be pretty minimal, however, if youre a CPA and youre looking to go into outside sales, youre going to want to develop a fairly different persona for yourself.

5. Use A Special Tool To Help Recreate Your Resume

There a number of resume creation and cover letter writing service sites that offer high-quality resume creation help and great online tools you can use to assist you in your resume writing and heres five of them:

1. Google Docs – Yes, Google Docs is a resume builder.  With hundreds of resume templates and reviews that let you know what people think of a particular template before you start downloading them, Google Docs is a great resume building tool. 
2. Visualize.me – Just connect to your LinkedIn account and Visualize.me will take the data to build an eye-catching representation of your skills and experience.
3. Flavors.me – An online service that helps you build your own online resume by extracting information from over a dozen sites.
4. CV Maker – A resume builder that supports 17 languages.  This tool offers an easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks format while allowing you to add sections with RTF formatting.

6. Show Off Your Successes With Cold, Hard Numbers

A well-written resume, that communicates your qualifications is essential, however, nothing drives a point(s) home like raw numbers – particularly numbers that represent dollars - that show off your accomplishments.  Laying down hard data will reduce the guess work a hiring manager has to go through when trying to analyze your qualities, and theyre also an equalizer if youre seeking to cross over from a very different field.  Simply put, numbers and numbers.  And a lot of hiring managers will be swayed by the idea that if you can produce success in one area, youll be able to have success in their industry as well.

7. Be Assertive With Your Job Title Description

Your resume is your opportunity to show off all that youve done, and if a single job title doesnt adequately convey your accomplishments and experience, then you can include a short descriptive line or two that will let hiring managers see just how deep your skill set it.

So, for example, if the title for your previous (or current) job was Software Designer, and youre seeking a position managing an up-and-coming video game company, you might want to include a descriptor under Software Designer that says (With a strong emphasis on team leading). 

However, be sure to stay truthful.  Its not an exaggeration you looking for, you simply want to accentuate your capabilities early on in your resume. 

8. Mix Up the Format

Since the primary purpose of the resume format is to draw in a hiring manager with a clear presentation of your experience and skill set, you can make things easier on the readers eyes by separating these qualities from the traditional chronological timeline of your work history.  This technique can be applied by using the first page of your resume as a sort of glorified profile that emphasizes the integration of your skills with relevant experience without distracting with the obligatory timeline.  However, the timeline is a necessity, so on the second page you can switch over to a traditional format with an emphasis on the chronology of your professional career.

9. Highlight Relevant Experience That Doesnt Involve Your Work

Since youre going into a new arena when you change careers, youre going to want to emphasize the accomplishments and experience youve acquired outside of your day-to-day job.  By including activities such as any professional associations youre a part of, consulting youve done on the side, internships, or even any impressive recreational accolades, youll be demonstrating the sort of more general positive qualities that a prospective employer will see as an asset to his or her company.

10. Locate Common Ground

Regardless of the industry, there are certain alignments that are common among the varying firms and management structures.  Thus, by identifying aspects of your present job that will resonate with whoever is considering having you join their firm, youll allow your prospective employer to feel more comfortable about bringing you on board. 

11. Only Include Whats Significant

Although you want a resume that impresses the socks of a hiring manager, you dont want to stuff it with every micro-success youve ever professionally experienced.  Just keep things lean and mean with the essentials and whoever is reviewing your resume will get the picture, not to mention, appreciate not having to weed through a lot of irrelevant minor achievements to do so.