CV Once

Writing a CV for a career change

Make the move make sense: a summary that explains it, evidence first, and your old job rewritten in the new field's terms.

When you change career, a standard CV works against you. It puts your most recent job title at the top, and that title says you’re a teacher, a nurse or a store manager, not the designer, analyst or project manager you want to become. A career change CV fixes that by changing the order, the framing and the evidence, without hiding anything.

Step 1: write down what the new job actually asks for

Collect three to five job ads for the role you’re aiming at and list the skills and tasks that come up repeatedly. For a junior UX designer you might get:

  • user research (interviews, usability tests)
  • wireframing and prototyping in a design tool
  • presenting findings to stakeholders
  • working with developers
  • a portfolio

This list is your brief. Everything on the CV should point at it. For more on this, see job ad keywords.

Step 2: find the overlap with what you’ve done

Go through your current and past roles and match real tasks to that list. Be honest and specific. A teacher moving into UX has more overlap than they might think:

UX skill in job ads What a teacher already does
User research Observes how 30 people learn, adapts material based on what they struggle with
Usability testing Trials a new worksheet with one class, revises it, rolls it out
Presenting to stakeholders Explains progress and decisions to parents, heads of department and inspectors
Designing for different needs Adapts lessons for pupils with SEND and English as an additional language
Iteration Revises schemes of work each term from assessment data

The gaps in the overlap (here, design tools and a portfolio) are what your projects and courses need to cover.

Step 3: rewrite old bullets in the new field’s terms

Your previous job’s bullets should still be true, but choose the achievements that transfer and describe them in words the new field uses. Don’t rename your job title; change what you emphasise.

Before: Planned and delivered maths lessons to Years 7 to 11.

After: Redesigned the Year 8 fractions unit after observing where pupils got stuck; end-of-unit test scores rose from an average of 54% to 68% over two terms.

Before: Responsible for the department’s online homework platform.

After: Ran a feedback survey of 120 pupils on the homework platform, identified three navigation problems and worked with the vendor to fix two of them.

The “after” bullets are still about teaching, but they show observation, testing, iteration and working with a supplier. The builder will flag weak openers like “responsible for” and bullets with no number, which is a quick way to find the ones that need this treatment.

Step 4: reorder the sections

The usual order (summary, experience, education, skills) assumes your latest job is your best evidence. When it isn’t, move the strongest relevant evidence up:

  1. Contact details
  2. Summary that explains the move (see below)
  3. Relevant projects or Selected UX work
  4. Skills, grouped by the new field’s categories
  5. Training and certifications (if recent and relevant; otherwise put them under Education)
  6. Experience, with transferable bullets first in each role
  7. Education

If your projects are thin, keep Experience above them and lean on the rewritten bullets. Don’t promote a section that has one weak item in it just to push your job title down. See CV section order and headings for headings that applicant tracking systems recognise.

Watch out: Avoid a purely “functional” CV that lists skills with no dates or employers. Many recruiters are wary of that format because it can look as if you’re hiding your history. A hybrid works better: skills and projects up front, then a normal dated work history.

Step 5: a summary that explains the move

The summary is the one place where you can tell the reader what’s going on. Three sentences is enough:

  1. Who you are now, in the new field’s language.
  2. The bridge: what carries over, with one piece of evidence.
  3. What you’re looking for.

Before: Passionate, hard-working teacher looking for a new challenge in an exciting field where I can use my creativity.

After: UX designer moving from eight years of secondary teaching, with a professional certificate in UX design and three portfolio case studies. Experienced in observing how people learn, testing changes with real users and explaining decisions to non-specialists. Looking for a junior or associate UX role in education or public-sector products.

The “after” version names the target role, gives proof and is specific about what you want. The builder flags common clichés like “passionate” and “hard-working” in the summary. For more, see writing a CV summary.

Step 6: projects and courses as evidence

For a career changer, projects are often the most persuasive section, because they show you doing the new job. Treat each one like a short role:

Library booking app redesign (personal project, 2025) - Interviewed 6 regular users of the local library’s online booking system and mapped their main tasks. - Built a clickable prototype in Figma; in a usability test with 5 people, average time to book a study room fell from about 4 minutes to under 90 seconds. - Case study: portfolio.example.com/library

Notes:

  • Say what kind of project it is. “Personal project”, “course project” or “volunteer, for a local charity” is honest and still counts.
  • Numbers from small tests are fine if you say how small. “5 people” is credible; “improved usability by 300%” is not.
  • Courses: list the provider, the name and the date (or “expected 03/2026”). A course without a project is weaker than a course with one, so if the course included a project, list that too.

See the projects section guide for more examples.

Step 7: deal with the old job title

You can’t change your job title, but you can add a short descriptor in the role line if it helps the reader see the link, as long as it’s accurate:

Maths Teacher and Key Stage 3 Curriculum Lead, Riverside Academy (2017 to 2025)

Keep your old roles to three or four bullets each, all chosen for relevance. Duties that don’t transfer at all (playground supervision, for instance) can go.

Common mistakes

  • Apologising for the change. “Although I have no direct experience…” puts the weakness first. State what you have.
  • Over-claiming. Calling yourself “UX designer” with no projects invites questions you can’t answer. “Moving into UX” or “junior UX designer” with real evidence is stronger.
  • Two CVs in one. If you’re still applying for jobs in your old field too, keep a separate version. Trying to appeal to both makes each weaker. See tailoring your CV.

Open the teacher-to-UX example in the builder to see this structure in a full CV, then edit it into your own.