They say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And since your CV makes your first impression for you when you’re on a job hunt, you cannot afford to leave it to chance.
Besides, your CV is sometimes your only opportunity to impress a hiring manager!
So, how do you create a stellar CV when you’re gunning for a mid-career job? As someone in the middle of your career, you now have more experience and accomplishments to fill in.
But how can you combine your year’s worth of continuing education, experience, certificates, and accolades into one streamlined structure that communicates the story of your career and achievements?
This article shares some insight to help you learn what to include in a compelling mid-career CV, some proven mid-career CV writing tips, and how to put your best foot forward when writing a CV with more than ten years of experience.
That being said, let’s dive right into what to include in a mid-career CV and some proven in-house hacks to tailor your CV for a mid-career job.
What to Include in a Compelling Mid-career CV
As a mid-level professional aiming to apply for a more senior position, creating a compelling mid-career CV is a critical step in your preparation for the move up.
However, suppose you’ve been employed for a while (say, a CV containing 20 years of experience). In that case, it might be challenging to decide which job experience to emphasise or which unique qualifications to highlight without making your CV excessively lengthy, cluttered, or challenging to read.
Let’s check out the essential things to include in a compelling mid-career CV
1. Relevant Skills
The secret to landing a job as a mid-level professional is differentiating yourself from the competition and being able to convince the hiring manager of your value before they even choose you for an interview.
This means you must highlight relevant and top skills in your industry. The best strategy is to read the job description and discover the keywords. This can include proficiency in some technical tools or specific soft skills.
You also want to consider adding advanced skills that make you stand out from other candidates. As a professional writing a CV with 10+ experience, you want to do away with basic skills as this doesn’t add real value to your CV as a whole.
For example, understanding the Agile project management process trumps proficiency in Microsoft Office programs or basic email programs.
2. Professional Accomplishments
For someone who has been in the working space for 10+ years, recruiters want to see and follow your professional accomplishments.
Most mid-career CVs emphasise your professional accomplishments more than every position you have held in the past.
This means you must be able to share quantifiable results you have garnered over the years in your different working roles.
You want to make sure you tailor your CV for a mid-career job to include numbers, as measurable accomplishments will impress hiring managers since they demonstrate your value.
Employers are drawn to numbers because they provide context. Numbers are often percentages, statistics, or other hard data that help a hiring manager assess the outcomes of your work and the value you brought in your prior roles.
To help the reader understand what your position involved and how you were able to produce outcomes, quantify the range of your function, your noteworthy contributions, and your successes whenever you can.
For instance, explain how your managerial efforts impacted the business instead of just mentioning that you oversaw a sales team tasked with pitching a new product to a target market.
You can mention that your team exceeded its sales targets and elaborate on the strategies you used to inspire the group to directly earn an extra $300,000 for the company.
The recruiting manager will be more likely to think you’d be a fantastic fit for their company if you can quantify your achievements.
In addition, use numbers to provide context for your accomplishments in the bulleted portion of each employment title.
You may include a summary paragraph and a list of your significant achievements for each position on your CV. For instance, if you work in sales, you can mention how you met or surpassed your quota.
3. Relevant Work Experience
In addition to highlighting your professional accomplishments, you also want to tailor your CV for a mid-career job by stating only relevant work experience. This should be tailored to the work you are applying to.
If you’re in the middle of your career, you likely have a ton of experience that you should emphasise.
So, even with lengthy employment history, you may need to remove any roles that aren’t relevant to the job you are currently applying for.
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, your professional experience is typically highlighted to demonstrate to potential employers that you are committed, experienced, and focused.
For someone with your level of experience, recruiters expect your CV to show your job advancement and the journey you have followed over the years.
Therefore, you must structure your CV to highlight your responsibility, your experience working on bigger projects, budgets, or teams, and when you received job title upgrades.
It must also be arranged chronologically to show how you have advanced from one point to another — for example, a progression showing your growth from a coordinator to a senior manager.
In addition, your noteworthy accomplishments should be highlighted in bullet points that follow each description of your work duties in each role.
In summary, unlike your early career CVs, your mid-level career focuses more on your work experience, professional achievements, and advanced relevant skills.
That being said, let’s check out the structure guideline to help tailor your CV for a mid-career job.
Structure Guideline for Creating a Top-notch Mid-career CV
Follow this guideline:
1. Introduction
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, you want to start with your name followed by contact details and relevant credentials.
At the top of your CV, next to your name, list the abbreviations for any advanced degrees or certificates you’ve obtained that are selling points for your desired employment position.
For example, if you have an MBA, you want to highlight that right at the top. This will ensure the recruiter recognises your essential qualifications during the initial examination of your CV.
2. Link to Online Portfolio
More than 95% of recruiters search for candidates’ social media profiles, especially LinkedIn, when looking for top talent for their customers or the businesses they work for.
Therefore, when you tailor your CV for a mid-career job, you want to include links to your relevant social media accounts and profiles.
This can be a customised link to your LinkedIn profile or an online portfolio if you want to get into the creative industry.
In addition, you could add links to your blog or Instagram account if this captures your skills and experience more adequately.
Whatever links you choose to include, make sure they are up to date, professional, and supportive of your present employment objectives.
3. Professional Title
A professional title makes your goals clear to the recruiter.
Your professional title should be clearly placed above your career summary, as this helps the reader know the specific role you’re applying for immediately.
This should then be followed by a concise career summary stating why you are qualified to seek that role.
4. Core Skills
Studies have shown that it takes an average recruiter six seconds to examine your CV before determining whether you are suitable for a position. Therefore, your CV typically has less than ten seconds to grab your potential employer’s attention.
Interestingly, most of that time is spent reviewing the information you provided on the top third of the first page.
So, your objective as a job seeker is to provide the reader with a summary of your objectives and experience in the first section of your CV.
You want to list your main competencies, typically referred to as “Areas of Expertise” or “Core Competencies.”
This list of CV keywords provides the recruiter with a summary of your qualifications. Additionally, this ensures your CV will pass a preliminary check by an applicant tracking system (ATS) software.
Before reading the CV, recruiters use ATS software to analyse applications and assess how well a candidate matches the job description.
By selecting and utilising the appropriate keywords from the job descriptions for your desired position, your CV has a better chance of passing this initial check.
5. Work Experience and Accomplishments
The next section to include when you tailor your CV for a mid-career job is your work experience/accomplishments.
This should be listed in a chronological format, with the most recent one listed first.
Under each job role, you also want to include bullet points that call out your responsibilities and quantifiable results in each position.
As earlier stated, employers are drawn to numbers because they provide context.
To help the reader understand what your position involved and how you were able to produce outcomes, quantify the range of your function, your noteworthy contributions, and your successes whenever you can.
For instance, saying that you lowered costs or managed a budget in a previous job is one thing. However, it’s more impressive when you explain that you reduced costs by 25% while managing a $1.5 million budget.
6. Education, Professional development, and technical proficiencies
When you write a mid-career CV, the next thing to include in your CV is your education, professional affiliation, and technical skills.
Although your resume must include a section on your education, it is better to add this information if you have already worked for a while (CV for 20 years experience).
Hiring managers are more interested in your professional job experience (the roles you’ve held, your responsibilities, and your career accomplishments) at this stage of your career than in what you’ve learned in school.
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, it is not necessary to go into specifics regarding the curriculum, academic accolades, GPA, or honours (such as cum laude).
Your professional successes as a mid-level professional will take precedence over your academic achievements.
That said, when listing your education, the three primary things to mention are:
- University name and location
- Degree title
- Graduation date
Tailoring Your CV to Target a Mid-career Job: Pro Tips for You
Follow these simple tips to create the perfect mid-career CV:
1. Personalise Your Cv for Each Job Description
When you write a mid-level career CV for a job role, you want to create a unique CV for each position you apply for, even when your abilities and expertise are the same.
Pay close attention to the job duties and desired abilities to position the most significant experience closer to the top of your CV.
The hiring manager will want to know precisely why you are a perfect fit for their open position.
2. Make Sure Your Credentials Stand Out
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, a great hack is ensuring your credentials stand out.
If you have an MBA, Ph.D., or any other degree that qualifies you, such as an advanced academic degree, military decoration, recognition, or accreditation, include this detail next to your name.
The goal is to ensure that the hiring manager can notice them immediately.
You could also need credentials to work in some professions, such as project management, human resources, IT, or finance.
As a mid-level job seeker, you’ll want potential employers to know these valuable credentials and the qualifications that come with the position.
Before looking for employment, get those credentials done so that companies can see that you’re serious about your new profession and that you’ve already made the necessary efforts to make it happen.
3. Focus on Your Accomplishment
When considering what to include in a mid-career CV, it’s critical to emphasize your successes alongside your responsibilities in your past and current job roles.
For instance, instead of just mentioning that you oversaw a new product launch, explain how you achieved sales of $150M with a limited PR budget of $120K.
You can include a summary paragraph and a list of your major achievements for each position on your CV.
4. Use Action-Powered Words
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, make a great impression using more action-powered language.
Why?
Action words emphasize your abilities, experience, and accomplishments in a CV. In addition, they provide specificity and clarity to your CV.
As a result, your chances of grabbing an employer’s attention and progressing to the next stage of the recruiting process can be increased by using these action verbs that are distinctive and powerful.
In the same way, avoiding weak and passive verbs, corporate jargon, clichés, and overused words and phrases are all great hacks to tailor your CV for a mid-career job.
Check out some examples of action-powered words to include in a mid-career CV:
- Accelerated
- Accomplished
- Analyzed
- Assembled
- Built
- Charted
- Created
- Constructed
- Coordinated
- Campaigned
- Collaborated
- Composed
- Brainstormed
- Communicated
- Conceptualized
- Acquired
- Boosted
- Captured
- Advised
- Aligned
5. Use a 2-page-long CV
Unlike new professionals and college students limited to a one-page CV, your professional CV expands as you gain more work experience. Therefore, we recommend letting your CV run into two pages if necessary.
A great mid-career writing tip is to reduce the space devoted to your early employment experience and move it to the second page of your resume.
Recruiters are more interested in your recent work and how it relates to their vacant positions than your first job after graduating from college.
6. Use a Consistent Resume Format
In structuring your CV, an excellent mid-career CV writing tip is to use a consistent structure for dates and places throughout the CV.
For instance, would you use full names or abbreviations for locations? Do you plan to use digits to symbolize the month, spell it out ultimately, or use a three-letter acronym if you decide to include it with your dates of employment?
In addition, when you tailor your CV for a mid-career job, be sure to proofread for spelling and other grammatical problems.
Regardless of your CV format, sticking with one design throughout the document is the most important thing. This way, you can develop a neat and polished professional CV in a consistent style that shows you’re a detail-oriented professional.
7. Place the Education Section at the End of the Resume
With increasing work experience, your degree or education becomes less critical.
As a result, recruiters are more inclined to emphasize your achievements after graduating.
You may also take out the year you graduated from college, depending on how much experience you have.
When you tailor your CV for a mid-career job, It’s best to focus on your most current and impressive achievements and less on your education.
5 Things to Avoid Including in a Mid-Career CV
Below are common mistakes to avoid while creating a mid-career CV
1. Your First Job
People looking through your CV for a mid-career job won’t care that you worked at a coffee house when you were younger.
When you tailor your CV for a mid-career job, It’s best to take out your first job or other positions while attending college unless you accomplished something specifically related to the work you’re going for.
Employers only want to see material on your CV that directly relates to the position they’re attempting to fill.
A comprehensive list of every job you’ve ever held will only make it easier for employers to find the necessary details.
2. Basic Skills
When you write a CV with 10-20+ years of experience, hiring managers expect to see the advanced skills you have gained.
It makes no sense to include basic skills from when you were an entry-level job seeker at this point in your career.
3. Weak Verb
Using weak verbs when you tailor your CV for a mid-career job is a no-no. You want to use action verbs that convey capability and power.
Check out the previous section on mid-career CV writing tips for examples of action verbs you can include in a mid-career CV.
4. Education at the Top
Once you’ve been employed for a while, your educational background is no longer as important as your professional accomplishments and advanced skills.
Your work experience over the years now takes the lead and is the greatest approach to show that you have the skills and knowledge necessary to be successful in your area.
To tailor your CV for a mid-career job, you should reorder your CV’s sections such that the education part is at the bottom.
5. Unnecessary Information
We get it! You have a lot of experience over the years and want the hiring manager to see how far you have come.
However, including every little information can do your CV more harm than good.
When you tailor your CV for a mid-career job, the goal is to make sure it is clear and easy for the interviewers to understand.
That being said, trim off any irrelevant information, especially those that have no connection to the work you’re applying for.
Wrapping It Up
When writing a CV for a mid-career job, the goal is to be able to represent your years of experience in an appealing and compelling presentation. Therefore, taking the time to learn hacks for tailoring your CV in the best way possible is not only necessary but essential.
We hope this article has provided you with the best mid-career writing tips to tailor your CV for a mid-career job. In addition, we have highlighted what to include in a mid-career CV and what not to leave out.
We can also do the hard work for you. The CV Expert is home to CV writing specialists that can craft the ideal mid-career CV in a few business days. Contact us today to learn more about our CV writing services.