Industry Agnostic Resume: What It Is and When to Use It

What’s an industry agnostic resume?

...and why your clients might need one.

A Key Component for Career Transition

Last year, over 60% of people who quit their jobs left for an entirely new field. This is a huge (think <15%) increase compared to earlier years.

As career professionals, we’ve all witnessed the underlying reasons for this: our clients are seeking more meaning, flexibility, autonomy, and variety.  The pandemic limited these so much in our lives.

As our clients prepare to venture towards new paths and vocations, we may find ourselves struggling to get them there.

How can we translate what our clients have accomplished in a way that resonates with recruiters in a new field?

This is where an industry agnostic resume comes in.

It’s a resume that’s not targeted for a particular field or industry.

It’s a master resume of all of their past experience and accomplishments, without the embellishments of an industry-focused resume.

Let’s look at a transformation that leverages an industry-agnostic resume.

Meet Rebecca Smith. She's been in apparel design for the bulk of her career. The resume below showcases those accomplishments.

To get Rebecca somewhere new, we need a resume that:

• Completely leaves out industry-specific language
• Frames sector-specific work in a more general way
• Incorporates the language of her desired field wherever possible.

See if you can spot the subtle differences in the resume below:

What makes this an industry-agnostic resume?

• There's no reference to fashion, or merchandise.
• Instead of apparel, we reference products.

Now that we have this blank slate, we can make minor edits to tailor it for the different roles that she's targeting.