Resume Formats

A resume is just a list of prior jobs, right? Wrong! When done correctly, a resume is a concise presentation of your skills, abilities and experience. Since many interviewers, particularly for higher paying positions, want to see your resume before they agree to a personal meeting, you have to be sure that your resume makes the most of that all important first impression.

Resume Basics You Need to Know

The format of your resume needs to complement the information you’re presenting and literally draw the interviewer’s eyes to what you want to be the focus. The primary types of resume formats are the chronological, functional, technical and combination.

The chronological resume is a list of jobs starting with the most recent and continuing with the next job and so on. If your work history shows a consistent progression with advancement in each new job, then the chronological resume format highlights your consistency.

Don’t worry if you can’t recall the exact day you started or left a job. Use the month and year to indicate start and finish dates. List your current job with the start date followed by a dash symbol and the work “Current.”

If you changed jobs more frequently than what’s considered typical for your industry or if you had gaps in employment, then the chronological resume will not present you in the best light.

Taking more than a month to transition between jobs is a red flag to an interviewer. Be careful about trying to cover up the gaps with vague titles such as “Consultant” or “Self-Employed.” Both of these are legitimate work options, but if they show up for short periods during gaps in employment, then you aren’t fooling anyone.

On the other hand, if you left your job to be a caregiver for an elderly parent or volunteer for six months with the Red Cross in a distant location, then go ahead and put that on the resume. It shows your ability to make and keep a personal commitment.

The functional resume places more attention on skills and talents than on job consistency. This is a good option for young workers with little experience, students fresh out of college or a middle age adult entering the workforce after years at home raising children.

The subtitles for each functional resume sections might be: Experience, Computer Skills, Project Planning or Project Direction. Further down the page, add the Employment section. Keep these sections balanced in size so that it doesn’t look like you’re hiding a lack of job history with a fluff list of skills.

If there’s no prior job history, use volunteer work or student organization work listed the same as you would list jobs. Clearly explain what skills you used as a volunteer that transfer to the work world.

Even without a paid job to show, an interviewer would be impressed by a student government officer who directed projects with a $200,000 budget or a volunteer who had the organizational ability to develop and implement a local project to create a food bank from excess restaurant supplies to benefit local homeless shelters.

The technical resume highlights job progression and increased levels of training in highly specialized areas. Whether you are in a professional level job or a worker who advances due to mastery of software, internal systems or industry specific training, the technical resume builds on prior skills, so if you’re applying for jobs in the same industry, then you can use industry specific terminology to describe the training. When technical abilities are your major selling point, then the technical resume is the best approach.

The combination format can blend two of these formats to suit your particular needs. This hybrid resume shows mastery as well as job history. By expanding each job to include descriptions of skills and achievements, your resume can show the functional aspects of your abilities along with the job history.

If you want to change industries or career fields, then use the combination format to give a sense of consistent employment, yet to focus on transferable skills. It’s particularly important to show a new employer that you have the type of skills and talents that are valuable in the new job.

For example, a person with several years of experience in fundraising for a non-profit agency who is applying for a sales position in a media company can use a combination resume to highlight transferable skills such as exceeding annual goals each year of employment, training in client presentations and willingness to make cold calls.

If you are applying for several jobs - some in your current field and some in a new field - then prepare your resume in two formats. When the job search is taking longer than hoped for, try refreshing your resume or change formats. There’s nothing wrong with having multiple types of resumes as long as the information presented is honest.

Once you decide on the right format for your resume, choose high quality paper on which to print it. Use either bright white or off white paper. Never print your resume on colored paper or paper with a decorative border. This is considered amateurish and is likely to send your resume straight to the trashcan.

Invest in large envelopes so that your resume and any attachments can be sent without folding, which looks more visually appealing than pages crammed into a standard envelope. 

Before you send the resume, take it the post office to be weighed so you know exactly how much postage to apply. Having your resume arrive with a “postage due” sticker quickly cancels out your resume statement, “gives careful attention to detail on every assignment.”

Sending resumes by email is becoming more acceptable and even preferred by some employers. Convert your resume to a PDF (portable document format), which can be easily read by IBM or Mac computers.

If asked to submit the resume as ASCII Text, realize that all the formatting that makes it look great as a document will be lost. Have a plain version of your resume that can be posted in online job boards or uploaded to a company website.

Your resume is a work-in-progress. As you find a new job, add that to the resume so that you have a current one at all times. Then if a new opportunity becomes available - either inside your company or outside in a different company - you can quickly check, print and submit your resume to get ahead of the other job seekers.