No matter where you are in your career, it’s important to have a professional and impressive resume that showcases your unique qualifications for the role. Your resume is often the first impression you make on a hiring manager or recruiter. If you’ve been in your career for a handful of years, your mid-career resume should reflect your experience, skills and certifications that make you the perfect fit for the position you’re interested in.

In this article, we describe what a mid-career resume is, explain how to write one and provide both a template and example for a mid-career professional resume.

What is a mid-career resume?

A mid-career resume is a resume that showcases the experience and skills you’ve gathered over the years you’ve worked in your profession. A mid-level professional would benefit from a succinct and specific resume that highlights the exact achievements and responsibilities that match the position they’re applying for. Most mid-career resumes are much more focused on the career path of the individual rather than sharing every single position the job seeker has worked in the past.

How to write a mid-career resume

If you’re at the mid-level of your career, meaning you have an average of 10 years of relevant professional experience in your employment history, follow these steps to write an effective mid-career resume:

1. Make sure your credentials stand out

If you’ve earned an MBA, PhD or any other credential like an advanced academic degree, military decoration, recognition or accreditation that allows you to put post-nominal letters after your name, do so. Place them after your name at the top of your resume so the hiring manager sees them right away. These credentials are valuable, and as a mid-level job seeker, you’ll want any potential employer to know the qualifications that automatically come with the designation.

2. Personalize your resume for each job

Although your skills and experience remain the same no matter which job you’re applying for, tailor your resume for each one anyway. The hiring manager will want to see exactly why you qualify for their open position, so pay close attention to the job responsibilities and even the preferred qualifications so you can place the most relevant experience closer to the top of your resume.

3. Remove irrelevant positions

Even if your very first position helped to lead you to where you are in your career now, you can probably remove it to condense your resume and make it easier for the hiring manager to read. Be sure to also remove any position that is not relevant to the one you’re applying for. If you’re at the midpoint of your career, chances are you have plenty more experience that you’ll want to highlight instead.

4. Focus on accomplishments

It’s common to list responsibilities when you build your resume, but as you do, focus in on your accomplishments as they relate to each one. For example, instead of simply stating that you led a sales team responsible for selling new products and services to a target audience, describe what difference your management efforts made for the company.

You can share that your team exceeded their sales goals and explain what you did to motivate the team to be directly responsible for securing an additional 225,000 for the business. Quantifying your accomplishments will help the hiring manager see you as a great fit for their organization. To do this, you can include a summary paragraph for each position along with a bulleted list of the key accomplishments you had in that role.

5. List your mid-level skills over any entry-level ones

Refrain from including entry-level skills on your resume that you’ll probably find on any mid-level professional’s resume. The key to securing a position as a mid-level professional is standing out from your competition and being able to effectively communicate your unique qualifications to the hiring manager before they even select you for an interview. Consider removing basic skills like Microsoft Word in favor of more advanced ones, like your knowledge of the Agile methodology for project management.

6. Use more impactful language

If you’ve written your current resume to include words like “responsible for,” “designated” or “coordinated,” explore more impactful words that you can use in their place. The more powerful your language, the more mid-level you’ll seem to a hiring manager or recruiter. Some of the more impressive action verbs can include:

• Overhauled.
• Chaired.
• Forged.
• Campaigned.
• Strategized.
• Storyboarded.
• Augmented.

7. Place your education section at the bottom

As you gain even more experience in your career, your education may not be as important to a hiring manager. It’s more likely that they’ll have a larger focus on the accomplishments you had post-graduation. You might remove your graduation year too, as your level of experience could deem this information irrelevant in comparison. It’s more common to list your graduation year when you’re a recent graduate.

8. Link to an online portfolio

Linking to an online portfolio is especially important if the job you’re applying for is more creative, like a graphic designer, copywriter or advertising manager

. However, you can create an online profile no matter what industry your career is in, from accounting to manufacturing. Your online portfolio can include your resume and a photo of yourself, and can also feature things like your hobbies, volunteer work and any portfolio-type items you want to include.

9. Use two pages for your resume

It’s a common misconception that your resume should never be more than a single page long. However, as a mid-level professional, you may have the experience to fill more than one page. If you have a two-page resume, ensure that you are gearing the entirety of it to the job you’re applying for and the ideal position you’re seeking.

10. Include a professional title

Consider including a professional title near the top of your resume right above your career summary or objective. Your title should be the name of the position you’re hoping to get in to. For example, if you’re seeking a position as a Director of Advertising, list it on your resume. This will help the hiring manager connect you with the role they’re looking to fill. Make sure you write and format your resume to match the professional title you started it off with.

11. Share your areas of expertise

Right below your professional title and before you list your work experience, share the core competencies you possess that relate to the role. Because mid-level professionals usually have a longer resume than more entry-level job seekers, a hiring manager may scan the resumes they receive for the open position. A section that showcases your areas of expertise in an easily digestible format will assist the employer in being able to scan this information and get a firm understanding of who you are and what capabilities you have.

Mid-level resume template

Use this template as a guide to write your own resume as a mid-level professional:

[Name and professional designation]

[Contact information, including home address, phone number and email address]

[Link to online portfolio or profile]

[Professional title]

Objective: [two to four skills or characteristics] [position] seeking opportunities with [name of organization].

[Areas of expertise or core competencies]

Professional experience: (listed in reverse chronological order)

[Position/title] | [Company or organization name] | [City, state]

[Month and year – month and year]

[Summary paragraph]

• [Bulleted list of key responsibilities and accomplishments]

Professional affiliations: (A list of organizations you’re a member with)

Skills: (A list of hard and soft skills

you possess related to the position you’re applying for)

Education: (listed in reverse chronological order)

[Degree name]

[University or college name] | [City, state]