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When you’re changing careers, your cover letter needs to be outstanding. Follow these tips and use our career change cover letter samples as inspiration.
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If you’re looking to break into a new career, then you need to create a job application that succeeds in pulling off the career transition. A job seeker without a lot of experience in the new industry, will need to showcase your career path so far and where you’re going in the future. Here’s a career change cover letter template that can help.
The first thing to do is understand where you should start. Here’s a career change cover letter example to help you understand what yours might look like:
Build my cover letterUse our tips and tricks to put together your career change cover letter. You can easily edit the one provided above on your own, or our our Cover Letter Builder. We have dozens of professional cover letter templates, offer step-by-step guidance and give you different downloading options.
For more cover letter writing tips, check our How to Write a Cover Letter article.
Build my cover letterDo you have past experience that somehow relates to the new career? Do you have skills that you can use? Focus your cover letter on the qualities you have that make you a good candidate for this new role, despite having no prior experience.
Career change job applications are all about creating a link between your previous work experience and the new job opportunity.
A cover letter is there to complement your resume, not repeat the same information. When a hiring manager receives a job application, they will see both documents side by side, to make sure what you write in your cover letter adds to your application.
Look at the job description and company website to see what skills the company values in their employees. You want to gear your application, resume and cover letter toward the company values.
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Yes. You should also explain how a past job’s experiences may have played into your career change. In this example, you can see that the applicant has always been interested in programming but decided to pursue a different career for some time. This explanation makes it seem more natural to move into this new career.
Typically, your best option is to just state that you’re interested in the job. Reference your old position and industry and explain why you’re changing paths. Then, simply discuss the areas that you excel at. You can mention specific skills and experiences from prior jobs that have influenced you to apply to a new job. Keep the discussion about your career change to a minimum.
A career change cover letter should be the same length as any other cover letter – typically around 3/4 of a page to half a page. This is long enough to explain your story and appear qualified for the job role but not so long that it becomes too long for a hiring manager to read.
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