What position should I include as my professional position in my resume?

Question

I am professionally a Software Engineer. I used to work as an associate software engineer for a company two years. And Since three months I am working as a software engineer for another company. Now I want to move to academics, as in another words, I want to be a lecturer for a higher education institute or a university as I have complete my post graduate studies with good grades. But I do not have professional experience in the academics field as a lecturer. Recently I saw few advertisements which are mentioning that candidates are welcome to apply with industry expertise too. Therefore I am planning to apply so. I have designed my resume like in the below image with name and last position title. and also with a picture.

My question is, when I apply for a different position, do I need to change the title according to the position that I am applying or do I need to keep it according to the profession that I am currently possessing professional experience for..? Or should I create the resume without a title?

Answer 1

Your title should be your Current professional title. You can change your title as it pertains to the profession you are applying to but I would balance that with how laughable it sounds.

For instance if I wanted to switch careers to a role as a professional speed skater it would be appropriate to call myself:

Speed Skating Enthusiast

or

Amateur Speed Skater

It would definitely be inappropriate to call myself even:

Speed Skater

Because I am not and never have been.

Leaving a title off is never wrong. At worst you are missing a chance to say something (possibly positive) about yourself.

Using your old title is best unless it will raise huge red flags. A software engineer applying for a dishwasher job isn't likely to even get an interview with me. It just seems too incongruous. However a transition from Engineer to Academics doesn't come off as nearly as unintelligible.

Answer 2

To answer your question directly,

Put your current official job title on your resume.

You are who you are. Do not change your job title and you should not change it because it is what your current employer gave you.

When schools are hiring lecturers, they are looking for people who have the knowledge and experience to teach the students what they need to know when they take courses.

If you intend to teach them how to do some sort of design like web page design, you probably should demonstrate your design capabilities in your resume. Otherwise, please get rid of those figurative image stuff.

Instead, you should emphasize what high education you have received, how much industry experience you have, what kind of things you think you can teach the students so that they have the necessary skills and knowledge when they enter the job market after graduation.