Switching careers as a mortgage officer is something you might want to consider after the recent market downturn due to the rise in interest rates. If you’re in the lending industry, you know that interest rates have a huge impact on volume – if loans are too expensive, people will forgo large purchases.
You’ve likely seen your income drop substantially over the last year. To keep your career and earning potential on track, you might want to think about choosing a different industry. The good news is that as a lending professional, you have numerous transferable skills that are applicable to other industries. For example:
- Analytical thinking
- Attention to detail
- Interpersonal communication
- Organization
- Time Management
These are all coveted skills in any industry. At Resume Writing Group, we often see lending professionals transition into other sales-related careers. Software sales, medical device sales, and financial sales are all hot career fields looking for talented professionals. However, if sales isn’t your focus, other common industries include:
- Customer success
- Compliance management
- Real estate
- Credit analysis
The first step to any job search is crafting a great resume that highlights your transferable skills, accomplishments, and key areas of expertise. While writing your resume, you should always think about how you can present value to a potential employer. Every employer hires employees because they have a problem they need to solve. For example, employers hiring customer success managers have a team of customer success representatives who need to be led and meet their goals. By understanding this problem, you can showcase why you’re the right candidate to solve it:
“I have five years of experience leading and building dynamic teams who have excelled at maximizing quality.”
When you write your resume as a solution to a problem, you instantly make yourself marketable beyond your current career. This is a critical strategy to leverage if you’re planning on switching career fields. Otherwise, employers in another industry may not understand how they can benefit from hiring you.
To learn more about writing your resume, check out this helpful article: How To Write About Your Experience
Over the years, one of the most common problems we see with people crafting their own resumes is that they dive right into the deep end. When you’re struggling to write a resume, you first need to think about what you do on a daily basis. Start by creating a list of the responsibilities you do every day. What do you do when you come into the office? Who do you meet with? What problems do you solve?
By answering basic questions like these, you can put together a detailed list of your responsibilities. Once you have a list of your responsibilities, you’ll want to trim out anything that isn’t relevant or important. Most employers simply won’t care that you attend a daily meeting. Instead, employers want to know what makes you useful and productive.
After you have put together your list of responsibilities, you’ll want to make sure that you also think about your accomplishments. Many candidates undersell their accomplishments because they’re too modest or don’t think the accomplishments are a big deal. Don’t undersell your accomplishments. Even small accomplishments like creating your own daily schedule to boost your productivity can help set you apart from other applicants.
Don’t be lazy!
Crafting a great resume is the first step in the right direction toward career success. But it certainly isn’t the only step. The time you invest in your career will pay itself back 10x if you invest it wisely. People who have successful careers earning six-figure salaries built their careers through careful maintenance.
Do you have a LinkedIn profile? There are 58,000,000 employers on LinkedIn. That’s a lot of jobs! It’s important to use networking tools like LinkedIn on a regular basis to build connections and set yourself up for opportunities. Unsuccessful people complain that they weren’t in the right place at the right time. However, successful people maximize their potential by setting themselves up to be in the right place at the right time. Switching careers may be as simple as creating a nice-looking LinkedIn profile so an employer can reach out to YOU with an opportunity.
Do you have an eye-catching cover letter? Career experts agree that cover letters are critical if you want to increase your chances of getting hired. Studies have shown that even when a cover letter is specifically required for an application, only 39% of applicants choose to submit one. This means that 61% of people are choosing to make themselves less employable because they didn’t want to take the time to write a cover letter. When you’re switching careers, a cover letter is even more important because it gives you a chance to explain why you’re transitioning.
Not sure how to write a great cover letter? Our team at Resume Writing Group can help.
Have you brushed up on your interviewing skills? Many people fall into the trap of thinking that an interview is for the company’s benefit. This line of thinking is a major mistake that can create an enormous headache in your career. Use an interview to your advantage by finding out as much as you can about the potential employer. Come prepared with questions about the work environment, potential colleagues, and staff turnover. You might want to think twice about signing on with a company that has a 90% turnover rate within six months. That level of turnover means there is a 90% chance you’ll be out of a job in six months trying to makeup for lost time.
When you’re looking to switch careers, your transition is as much about avoiding potential dead-ends as it is about finding new opportunities. That’s why it is so important to interview effectively, do your research, and make sure a company is going to be a good fit for you. Sometimes, that means talking to other people who already work in the field. By communicating with others, you can get valuable feedback on what you can expect.
At the end of the day, your career is what you make of it. Transition out of an industry like lending is something our team at Resume Writing Group helps clients with on a daily basis. If you’re thinking about switching, send our team a message and see what we can do to help point your career in the right direction.
Additional Reading:
The Do’s and Don’ts of Resume Writing
How to Get Hired if You’re Over 60
Answer Interview Questions Effectively with the STAR Method
