Knowing how to compellingly present your transferrable skills is just as difficult as identifying what they are in the first place.

In Effective Resumes for UX Career Changers, NNg author Evan Sunwall writes:

Hiring managers spend most of their time on other people’s resumes. These resumes are frequently bloated with self-serving, low–information-density content to mask delivering the bare minimum.
A resume following the guidance [in this article] will be noticeable and stand out.

This excellent NNg post covers CV optimization, including tips on highlighting your breadth of experience through reframing (and not hiding) previous roles. To summarise the key points of Sunwell’s advice, here’s how to tweak content from your old CV to showcase the relevant moments of your professional past:

Responsibilities
Summarise your job duties concisely. Highlight skills such as interviewing, data analysis, content strategy, presentations, visual design, software development, project management, team management, or budgeting — all of them are competencies that design roles heavily lean on.

Achievements
For each role, emphasise achievements with quantitative business impact. Keep it brief and select one or two maximum per role, picking ones where you used skills with some UX relevance.

Growth trajectory
If you were promoted or changed jobs while at the company, make sure to list each role separately to show how your responsibilities changed over time. This shows that you’re capable and experienced at shifting your career.

As a career changer, your non-UX work history is extremely valuable if presented correctly. Hiring managers want to see how your past experience translates. Even if a direct link to UX isn’t obvious, showing that you consistently delivered value to your employer collaboratively, on time, and within budget still demonstrates your strengths.

Ultimately, including the non-UX experience in your CV is a lot less about covering your past roles, and much more about demonstrating your capacity for growth.

Head over to NNg to read Sunwell’s full post for more in-depth information on CV-writing best practice for career switchers, such as:

• how to optimise your CV’s content and structure for rapid scanning by busy hiring managers rushing through hundreds of CVs
• how to create a CV layout that is concise and highly effective, but still visually appealing
• how to make sure common automations in applicant tracking systems will easily process your CV and extract maximum information from it

» Effective Resumes for UX Career Changers by Evan Sunwall