I’ll always repeat this to everyone as my go to.

For starters don’t count yourself out. If it says college degree or cert required and you don’t have it, apply anyways. I ignore them every time and 99% of the time I get an interview.

For resumes/CVs make sure to copy and paste some of the language they use in the job description or post. Try to blend it into things you have done or the hobbies you do.

Don’t forget to also use references that are actually pertinent to the job. Your previous boss is a good one, but so are people who work in that field that can vouch for you. Don’t be afraid to actually ask people you know and name drop where you can.

Interviewing is a skill. Take notes, take time to answer questions, drink some water. Acknowledge interviewers and their questions and always try to stay on track of their question. Sometimes I have stories for my answers and at the end I like to bring it back by repeating the question and then explaining how that story answered it.

Lastly be reliable and helpful at your job. People don’t care if you don’t answer work calls or texts after hours, but they do care if you take initiative to help and ask occasionally if there’s something you can do to help. Don’t over work yourself, and remember to shit on company time, but do try to make an impact on key people so you can keep crawling up this shitty capitalist ladder.

Also, checkout Etsy for some good Google doc templates. I paid like 99 cents for a great resume and CV template that looks way better than I could have done in a few hours. I keep my resume, reference letters, any important job docs, and a spreadsheet of references in a Google drive folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, other cloud services work too obviously).

You want a functional resume, which focuses more on skills rather than work history. I know a CV isn’t the exact same thing as a resume, but it’s similar enough that if you searched “functional resume examples” you would have a good starting point. You can always include skills that you obtained through education/hobbies/volunteer activities too.

https://rxresu.me/

Hobbies and skills sections are good for the other bits. You can call them freelancing. :)

I never use cover letters, but I would in your case.

I've recently gone through something like 80 CVs for three positions and only one had a cover letter. In it they explained their situation and eagerness to have their career be more involved in the advertised position. In this letter, they explained a lot of what they know and can do which their current experience did not really indicate.

Their understanding of the role and clear eagerness to build into this pathway has scored them an interview. I see in them the potential to mentor and quickly train a very interested mind. If they're as impressive in the interview, I'll prefer them over people that are experienced and specialised, simply because they're an eager clean slate that can hit the ground running somewhat, and that's quite a breath of fresh air.

Write in accomplishment statements. There are plenty of guides online about how to do that. I straight up have a categorised list of skills at the top of my resume and then below they have an accompanying accomplishment statement that explains how I have used that skill. This gives an easy way for the interviewer to ask you about something you can talk to.

Attach a portfolio of work when appropriate, visual examples are great to show what you know.

Have you checked the local Department of Labor?

The book 'What Color Is Your Parachute?' has been in publication for fifty years. Might be worth checking out.

Applications the easy part. Its the behavioral interview questions that are challenging. Holy heck.

I usually write it in "other experience". Personally I like to include the languages that I know with some description of how well I read/write/speak/understand them and my experience with working with those countries. I also include various hobbies in the more personal data section, even if they're not related to the current position. It's also perfectly fine to add an entire section just for IT-skills if you think it makes sense. All jobs involve IT somehow, so it's usually a good idea to mention something about it. Even if the job doesn't require you to know C++ or Adobe it still shows that you understand IT better than on MS Office user level

Write down in simple words without much thought what all your skills are. Throw those into chatgpt with the question to write a cover letter and make a CV. Tell it to ask you extra questions to complete the cv for you.

Et Voila!