This article is divided into two parts. Part one walks you through the steps of writing a chronological resume; part two shows you the specifics of writing a functional resume. Before we begin, here are three important reminders:
- Tailor information to your job goal. Emphasize those qualifications most relevant to the kind of position you want. If you are pursuing two or more different career goals, you need to write a separate resume for each. Remember that you are selling yourself as the answer to a specific need—and your resume should address that need as closely as possible.
- Make every word count! Keep in mind that prospective employers will spend less than 30 seconds reviewing your resume. You must keep it clear, concise and focused on the information that will sell you best. Give priority to the most meaningful of your qualifications, even if it means excluding others.
- This is a rough draft. Don't worry about getting your words in perfect shape yet. Pay more attention to content than style for now.
A Few Words about Style and Length
Because we're only concerned with completing a rough draft of your resume, we won't get into the specifics of type styles, page layouts, etc.
There is, however, one style rule to consider at this point: length. Your resume should be a maximum of two pages—two easily readable pages. Not only will most employers not bother to read anything longer, but a resume exceeding two pages will probably be a mark against you. Employers assume that someone who can't sum up her qualifications in two pages or less doesn't have the organizational skills or powers of communication it takes to succeed in today's fast-paced business climate, and you won’t be offered an interview.
A Few Words about Words
Use strong, action-oriented words and succinct, tight phrases.
Use the present tense when detailing current positions. Use past tense when describing previous experiences, use past tense. Forget about what your English teachers said about writing in complete sentences. Resume grammar is different. Use short phrases, and leave out unnecessary words, such as "I," "the," "an," etc.
For example, instead of:
I sold more goods than any other employee in the store during one year.
You should write:
Achieved store's highest annual sales total.
And a Note about Punctuation
This is another area where everyone disagrees. For example, some experts instruct you to put a comma between the month and year, as in "May, 1990," while others insist it's not needed, preferring "May 1990."
Thankfully, this is also not a very critical issue. We can't imagine employers caring a bit about which comma rule you adopt. The only thing that's important is that you be consistent throughout your resume. It's a small detail, yes, but every little touch of professionalism counts.
Part 1: The Chronological Resume
1. The name header
Treatment: The name header, which tells employers who you are and how to reach you is always the first thing on the resume page. Put the name header or your name only, in boldface type to make it even more prominent.
Construction: Your name header should include your full name (or first and last names and middle initial), your address and phone number. If you are living at a temporary address (as in the case of a college student living away from home), both your temporary and future addresses and phone numbers, and indicate the dates you can be reached at each.
Use the most professional version of your name. You want to create the image of a serious, "real" adult. So use Melissa rather than Missy; Barbara rather than Babs. And even if everyone has called you "Honey" from the time you learned to talk, use your real name on your resume, be it Harriet, Henrietta, Hildegard or whatever.
If you have an unusual or difficult-to-pronounce name, you may want to include a pronunciation guide. This will make employers more comfortable when contacting you. For example;
Julia Kjell
(Pronounced "shell")
Wait! Given the possibility of gender discrimination, could it be advantageous to conceal the fact that you are a woman? Should you deliberately avoid indicating your gender—say, by using just your initials instead of your full name?
The experts say no; absolutely not. Don't make sex an issue. If employers are so blatantly biased as to eliminate all women from the job-search process, changing your name on your resume isn't going to help you get the job; they're going to figure out sooner or later that you're a woman, after all. And employers who aren't discriminatory may feel a bit conned, which could hurt your chances as well.
Dressing Up Your Address
Some resume guides advise "doctoring" your address. For instance, indicating that you live in a major city as opposed to an outlying suburb. Such tactics not only worth the fuss, but they can also be downright dangerous. Unless you give your correct address, employers may not be able to contact you!
Telephone Tag: The Kiss of Death
The phone number is the most crucial and most problematic element in the name header. You need to list a number where prospective employers can reach you during hours that they are working. This creates difficulties if you are currently working during those very same hours. Unless you answer your own phone or otherwise run no risks if a potential employer contacts you at work, you shouldn't include your work number.
Of course, you can't expect employers to contact you at home after business hours, either. Then what's the solution? Put your home phone number on your resume, then buy, beg, rent, or borrow an answering machine if you don't already own one. Another option is to sign up for the voice mail services your phone company may offer. Whatever you do, don't rely on someone else living in your home to take your messages.
Make sure that the outgoing message on your answering machine sounds professional and states your full name—not just your first name or your phone number. People are often hesitant to leave a message unless they know for sure they've reached the right person. Steer clear of joke messages or messages from your cat or your kids. Check for messages frequently, and return any calls immediately.
2. The (Optional) Job Objective
Treatment: If you decide to use one, the job objective should appear first on the resume, directly after the name header. Set off the objective with the headline "Objective," "Job Objective," or "Career Objective."
Construction: Somewhere along the line, it became popular to use vague, wishy-washy objectives that read something like:
To utilize my skills and talents in a position with a forward-thinking company that allows me to contribute to the success of the company and grow in my career.
However, if you use an objective like that today, you only waste time and precious resume space. It tells the employer nothing, and it certainly doesn't paint the picture of someone who knows what she wants out of life.
Instead, state exactly what is the position you seek. You want to avoid the "I'm anybody you want me to be" approach. Your objective should communicate, "This is who I am. This is what I want to do." Be strong, confident, focused, and concise. Limit yourself to 10 or 12 words. Here are two examples:
Inside sales position for a telecommunications company
Women's apparel buyer for a department store
3. The Skills Summary
The skills summary, which is a brief roundup of your qualifications, also must be succinctly stated and targeted to your job goal. Your summary should highlight experience and qualifications most relevant to the position you want. Stick with specific experience, skills, and training; don't include references to personal work habits, such as "hard-working," "loyal," etc.
Treatment: If you use a summary, it should appear directly after your name header or the job objective. If you include that element, headline choices include "Skills Summary," "Experience Summary," and "Summary of Qualifications." You can write your summary in paragraph style or as a list of bulleted points.
Construction: Your goal is to write a summary that makes the employer stop and think, "Aha! Here's exactly the kind of experience we're looking for. I want to read on."
If you use the paragraph style, limit yourself to two or three short sentences. Here are two examples:
Registered dietitian with eight years clinical experience in a hospital setting. Master's degree in adult education; two years university teaching experience.
Five years’ experience as a systems programmer/analyst for major international corporations. Proficient in COBOL, C and FOCUS programming languages. Special expertise in marketing support systems.
If you choose the bullet-listing style, include just four or five bulleted points. An example:
- 10 years professional advertising design experience
- Winner of 5 ADDY awards.
- Expertise in Adobe Illustrator, PageMaker, and other desktop publishing software
- Strong background in banking, real estate, and telecommunications advertising
If you're not sure what to include, you may want to go ahead and complete the rest of your resume. Reviewing the sum total of your experience and qualifications should help you develop your skills summary. Or, refer back to your worksheets, especially the "Skills Summary" page, or consult your Career Card file.
Always put your most important and most relevant qualifications first in your summary! If you are pursuing two different career directions and creating two resumes, you'll have to alter your summary to match each goal.
4. Experience
In this section—the backbone of your resume—you detail your work experience and accomplishments.
Note that when we say "work experience," we are not necessarily referring to paid work experience. For matters of convenience, well refer to volunteer experience and paid experience jointly as "experience" throughout this section.
Treatment: Depending on your situation, you may want to:
- List paid and volunteer positions separately. Create two listings of your positions, labeling one "Employment History" or "Professional Experience" (to indicate that jobs detailed were paid positions) and the other "Volunteer Experience," "Other Experience," or "Related Experience" (to indicate that these positions were unpaid).
One section should follow immediately after the other. Which listing you put first-and how much emphasis you give to each-depends on which experience is most relevant to your job goal. - Combine volunteer and paid positions into one chronological listing. This can be very effective when both types of experience are relevant to your goals or when combining the two closes career gaps. A good heading for a section including both types of experience is, "Professional and Volunteer Experience" or simply, "Experience."
However, if you've held down volunteer and paid positions simultaneously, this format can get a little confusing; employers may have a difficult time sorting out the timeline of your career. In this case, it's probably best to separate the two titles of experience into two listings. Ditto if your volunteer experience is very different in nature from your paid experience—for example, if you're employed as a physical therapist but your volunteer experience is in the cultural arts arena. - List paid positions only. If your volunteer experience isn't particularly noteworthy or not relevant to your job goal, you can simply mention your involvement at the end of the resume, in your memberships and activities section.
In a moment, we'll discuss each of the components of the experience profile in depth. But first, let's look at how those components might be combined on the page. A classic style for presenting your experience is demonstrated below:
1989-1993 Shangri-La Hotels, Inc., New York City Promotions Manager
Developed image and marketing campaign to promote national hotel chain. Supervised staff of seven designers, copywriters, and marketing specialists.
- Increased database of qualified prospects by 50%.
- Designed promotion that increased annual net profit by 5%.
- Created ad campaigns that won travel- industry awards.
If you've had several different positions at one company—especially if you've been promoted—that's a plus. It shows that you're a loyal employee and that you're capable of handling increased levels of responsibility. To avoid repeating the employer's name before each position and to emphasize that you stayed in one place for a number of years, you might want to list your positions as shown on the following page. Notice how specific dates for each position are included after the job title.
1985-present ABC Manufacturing Company, Bryan, Wisconsin
Sales Manager, 1990 to present. Direct sales activities of 15 regional sales representatives serving the Eastern U.S.
- Exceeded company sales goals on a reduced budget.
- Created "Preferred Client" program that increased orders from key customers while maintaining appropriate profit levels.
Sales Associate, 1987 to 1990. Sold industrialized widgets to manufacturing corporations throughout Pennsylvania. Developed and maintained 300-company client base.
- Acquired 15 major new corporate clients during a two-year period.
- Developed centralized sales-accounting system that generated more accurate sales reports and reduced paperwork.
The exact content of the individual listings of your experience profile will depend upon the importance of each position. Your most recent and most relevant positions should include the following:
- Name of employer.
- Employer's location.
- Your dates of employment or affiliation.
- Your position or job title.
- A summary of your responsibilities.
- Your major accomplishments.
Include this "full" listing for the first four to six positions in your profile or for the first seven to 10 years of your experience. After that, detail positions in full only if doing so lends additional strength to your resume. Otherwise, just state the employer's name and location, your position, and dates of employment.
Now, let's get into the nitty-gritty of writing your experience listings. Here's how to handle each element of a full listing.
- Employer or organization name and location. State the company's full name, along with location, unless that is obvious from the employer's name.
When listing the name of an organization that is known by a nickname or its initials that may be unfamiliar to employers, give the full name first, followed by the initials in parentheses. For example: "Michelson Tire and Tool (MTT)." It's okay to refer to the organization thereafter by the initials. - Work timeline. Indicate the month and year you began and left each position. If you've been in the workforce many years, and you were at each job for a year or more, you can consider dropping the month.
- Your job title. If your actual job title wasn't very glamorous or you did more than your title reflects, you may be tempted to "alter" it just a bit. For example, suppose you were hired as an administrative assistant to a meeting planner, but you actually did most of the meeting planning work. Should you put down "meeting planner" as your job title?
Proceed with caution! What would happen if a prospective employer called your former boss to verify that you were employed as a meeting planner? Don't run the risk of being caught in what might be perceived as a lie.
Many companies have rigid title hierarchies. If you change your title from "creative projects coordinator" to "creative director," you may offend and anger the person your prospective employer contacts to verify your position. Never improve the status of your position by listing a title that implies you were higher up on the company ladder than you actually were.
However, it's probably okay to make slight changes in your title. If first-line supervisors in your company were referred to as "group leaders," you should be safe using the more universally understood title, "supervisor." It wouldn't hurt to alert your former boss that you've done this, if possible so that he or she won't be caught off-guard if asked about it.
4. A brief description of your responsibilities. Keep this short—just one or two brief statements. Remember, your resume is a selling tool, not a job description. Don't try to mention every function; sum up your major responsibilities in broad terms. You can state your summary in paragraph form or combine it with your accomplishments in one list of bulleted points.
Indicate your level of responsibility—the size of the budget you controlled, the number of people you supervised, the amount of revenue you were responsible for, and so on. Although you shouldn't try to mislead employers into thinking your job was something it was not, focus on those responsibilities most relevant to your new job goal.
When summarizing your responsibilities, use action words. Avoid using the same words; don't begin every statement with "Directed," for example.
5. A list of your most important or relevant accomplishments. List a few accomplishments that show that you were successful in your position. State your accomplishments in specific terms, including the amount of revenue saved or earned, if relevant.
Refer to your worksheets and career file for details. If you have many accomplishments, select those that will be the most impressive given the type of job you are seeking. Ask yourself when writing your accomplishments, does this point reflect:
- How I increased profits?
- How I saved the company money?
- How I solved problems?
- How I increased efficiency or productivity?
- How I met or exceeded goals?
Example #1: Suppose you're in corporate accounting and one of your duties is to coordinate the annual budgeting process for three key departments. But each year, yours is the only division that completes budgets ahead of schedule. This says that you not only do what you are supposed to do but that you go above and beyond the call of duty. Your accomplishment statement must reflect that fact.
Before
- Coordinated annual budgeting process for three departments.
- Coordinated development of $15 million annual budget for three key departments; only budget unit consistently completed ahead of schedule.
accomplished distributed performed
achieved edited persuaded
adjusted eliminated planned
administered enlarged prepared
advised established presented
analyzed evaluated processed
approved examined produced
arranged expanded promoted
assisted formulated proposed
built founded provided
calculated guided purchased
charted headed recommended
compared identified reduced
compiled implemented referred
completed improved reorganized
composed increased replaced
conducted initiated reported
consolidated inspected represented
constructed installed researched
consulted instituted restored
controlled instructed reviewed
coordinated interpreted revised
counseled invented scheduled
created justified selected
decreased led served
delivered lectured sold
designated made solved
designed maintained studied
detected managed supervised
determined modified supplied
developed motivated taught
devised negotiate tested
diagnosed obtained trained
directed operated translated
discovered ordered won
disproved organized wrote
Example #2: You've been membership chairman of a civic association for three years. Your duties are to enroll new members and maintain existing memberships. Each year, you have exceeded enrollment goals by 50 percent, and you've increased your member-retention rate from 70 percent to 85 percent. In other words, you've done a great job! See how the "before" statement downplays your accomplishments, while the "after'' statement makes it clear that you're not only capable of meeting goals, but have the drive and wits to surpass them.
Before
- Enroll new members and maintain existing memberships.
- Exceeded member enrollment goals by 50% for three years in a row.
- Increased member-retention rate by 15% over a three-year period.
Before
- Conceived and organized marketing campaigns that resulted in 400 new members in a one-year period.
- Conceived and organized marketing campaigns that resulted in 400 new members in a one-year period. Members acquired during this time received no services in exchange for membership fees (YWCA facilities not yet built).
5. Education
Treatment: Details about your education generally follow the experience section in both the chronological and functional resume. However, there are some situations when it makes sense for this information to appear first:
- You're a recent college graduate with little experience.
- You're changing careers, and your education is more pertinent to your new area of interest than your recent job experience.
- You're seeking a job in a field where specialized education is a prerequisite for employment.
- The name and location of the school (city and state unless either are evident from the name).
- The date of your graduation.
- Your degree or major area of study.
- Your GPA (optional).
Post-secondary education
When listing college and trade-school degrees, you can use the abbreviated forms B.A., B.S., M.B.A., etc.-or spell out the degree name: Bachelor of Science degree, etc. Whichever form you choose, be consistent throughout all listings.
Like all of the other elements of your resume, the specific arrangement of your post-high school education depends upon what you believe to be the most impressive to prospective employers. The placement of the degree you earned, the school you attended and the years of your attendance can be shifted about to put emphasis on one aspect or detract from another.
If you want to emphasize the school you attended rather than the degree you earned or courses you took, for example, you would list the school name first:
Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; B.S. in General Business, 1990
On the other hand, if you feel your degree would be a better sales point than your alma mater, put your degree first:
B.S. in Economics, 1980, State College, Grandview, Oregon
If you have more than one degree, list the most recent or relevant first. If you graduated with honors, you can note that fact in your "Honors and Awards" section or within your educational listing:
B.S., Engineering, 1987 cum laude graduate, Ohio State University, Columbus
If you did not graduate, indicate the years that you attended instead of a graduation date. If you completed many credit hoaxers, be sure to state the numbers. Here's an effective way to treat this information:
Arizona University, Tucson, computer programming courses, 1989-1991
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 30 credit hours in computer science, 1976-1978
Notice how these listings de-emphasize dates while playing, up the school and area of course work. (Getting the hang of this "best foot forward" thing now?)
If you have specific course work related to your job goal, but that course work is not obvious from your degree, you can briefly indicate that fact here. For example, suppose you have a degree in business, but you took a lot of courses in film production as electives. Now you're seeking a job as a financial manager for a film-production company. Let employers know about your general knowledge of the film world:
B.A., Business, 1984, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida
- 15 credit hours in film production and film studies.
High school education
Include information about your high school education only if you are a recent graduate or did not attend college or a trade school—in other words, if it is the most important educational credential that you have. If you did not graduate from high school, but later earned a GED (equivalency degree), provide that information instead.
If you attended several different high schools, list the one you last attended or from which you received a diploma. Include the same pieces of information as you would for a college degree, except the area of study:
Wabash High School, Wabash, Texas, graduated May 1986
Should you include high school data after you've long since put away your yearbook? Probably not, even if that is your only formal education. It's simply not very relevant to employers. And you're in a no-win situation when it comes to providing the date of your high school years: Tell an employer that you graduated from high school in 1959, and you've announced your age, loud and clear. Leave off the date, and employers may suspect that you're trying to hide your age. Either way, age discrimination may rear its illegal, but nonetheless prevalent, head.
So if your high school years are as much a part of the past as poodle skirts, love beads, and even disco balls, don't mention them on your resume.
Should you include GPA?
If you've been in the workforce for many years—say, 10 to 20—there's no need to include information about your grades in school. Your accomplishments and experience should be enough to indicate that you are intelligent and hard-working. If your grades were truly exceptional, of course, you won't do yourself any harm in mentioning your GPA (grade point average), unless doing so takes up page space you might fill with more recent accomplishments.
But whether you've been out of school for decades or just a month or so, list your GPA only if you had good grades! As a general rule of thumb, include your GPA if it was 3.5 or higher on a 4.0 scale, or 5.0 and up on a 6.0 scale. Be sure to provide both your GPA and the scale on which it was registered.
Alternatively, you can list your class ranking, if that's more impressive. If you graduated with honors, and you mention that in your degree listing, there's no need to add your GPA—your educational prowess is already implied.
You can indicate your grade average or ranking as follows:
B.A., Music Education, 1991, Howard University, Washington, D.C., 3.714.0 GPA
Brown High School, Jasper, N.H. Graduated May 1990; ranked 5th in class of250
Special educational experiences
You may want to mention any unique educational experience you've had, such as spending a year as a foreign exchange student. Even if these experiences aren't directly linked to your career goal, they indicate that you are a person who goes one step beyond the norm, who's open to new opportunities and challenges.
For example, suppose you studied art in Paris during your junior year in college. Include it in a bulleted point after you list your degree, as so:
B.A., Art History, 1979, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa
- One year of foreign study in Paris, at Parisian Art Institute.
BA, Radio-TV-Film, 1984, Northwestern University, Evanston, III.
- One-year film production internship at Chicago Film Board.
If you're just out of school and have little work experience, you'll need to play up your educational experience in much greater detail than outlined above. You can include:
- Course work related to your job objective.
- School activities.
- Educational accomplishments.
As much as possible, present this information in the same format as you would professional experience—that is, focusing on specific accomplishments.
6. Licensing, certification, and special training
Treatment: List any special training you've had and any professional licenses or certification you currently hold. Use whatever heading is appropriate: "Training and Certification," "Professional Licenses," "Special Training," etc. If you prefer, you can group this information together with your education information instead of making it a separate section.
Construction: For professional licenses and certification, include:
- Name and type of license.
- The state or states in which it is valid, if appropriate.
- The date it was acquired.
- Number of the license, if appropriate.
Here are some examples:
- Ohio Teaching Certification, elementary education, 1980.
- Montana Real Estate License, 1991.
- Certified Public Accountant, New Jersey, 1988.
For special training, include:
- Name of the course.
- Name and location of the institution where you took the course.
- The date you completed the training.
If the skills you profile in this section will be vital in your new job, this treatment is okay only if you are putting your Education and Training information at the top of the resume. Otherwise, you're missing the boat, because you're lessening the prominence of this data.
A better option is to weave it into your experience profile-ideally, within your accomplishments. This will indicate that you not only were trained in these skills, but also used them on a daily basis and, in the case of related accomplishments, that you excelled in them. Another alternative is to include this information in a skills summary at the top of the resume.
Company-Paid Seminars
Especially in corporate life, most employers routinely send employees to professional development seminars. These one-day or one-week seminars typically deal with such subjects as how to communicate better with co-workers, how to manage staff members and other aspects of business interaction. This kind of special training, while it can certainly be valuable, is not "resume worthy." Your attendance or completion of such courses does not indicate a major accomplishment because rarely is any major effort on the part of trainees required.
However, if you completed a special training program that is more akin to a regular college or trade-school course, and it is related to your career, go ahead and mention it. A good example is an extensive training course on a particular type of computer software. Here's how you might state this data:
Desktop publishing: Completed intensive, three-month training program; Wright Computer Systems Training Center; Lincoln, Nebraska, May 1990.
7. Memberships and activities
Treatment: This is the place for mentioning any memberships and activities you did not previously detail in your main experience profile.
The title you give this section should, like others in your resume, reflect its contents. If you list only professional affiliations, title the section "Professional Affiliations." If you list only community organizations, title the section "Community Activities" or "Outside Activities."
Affiliations you mention here don't necessarily need to be related to your career. The goal of this section is simply to let employers know that you are a good, well-rounded citizenand—especially impressive in these busy, harried times—that you can manage your time well enough to permit involvement in outside activities!
However, if you belong to lots of professional and social organizations, include only a handful of those that will be most meaningful to prospective employers. Affiliations related to your career and organizations in which you have made significant contributions should be given priority.
Construction: Unlike volunteer positions you chronicle in your experience profile, all the activities you mention in this section should be current activities. Do not fill up the page with memberships you let expire 10 years ago. Keep listings brief, mentioning just the name of the organization and any leadership position you hold.
Consider carefully what you choose to include. Memberships in organizations that provide community or school support are all relatively safe. But a mention of your involvement with a certain political party, religious group, or controversial organizations such as NOW and Planned Parenthood could set off silent alarms of discrimination.
Here are some sample listings;
- Board of Directors, Earth Day Cincinnati, 1990-present.
- Member, Greater Cincinnati Businesswoman's Association.
- Member, Spartan High School PTA, Cincinnati; Membership chair, 1989-1990.
If you want, you can include an accomplishment—but if it's a significant accomplishment, or you have lots of accomplishments to mention, it’s better to move all of this information into your main experience or volunteer section. You want to spotlight such experience, and because a memberships and activities section might not get more than a glance from employers, this isn't the place to do it.
8. Awards and honors
Treatment: Awards and honors you received as a result of work experience, of course, should already be included as accomplishments within your experience profile. Why there, and not here? Because this section usually falls near the end of the resume—and you want your career-related awards to have more prominence.
If you do, in fact, have honors and awards to mention in your experience profile, be sure to title this section "Additional Awards and Honors" or "Other Honors and Awards," so that employers are reminded that these are not your only special achievements. Otherwise, the title "Awards and Honors" will do fine.
Construction: List only significant honors that will reinforce the impression that you are an outstanding citizen, an exceptional student or a specially talented and motivated individual. ("Best Holiday Lawn Decoration" is an example of what not to include-unless, of course, you want a job as a lawn decorator.)
Provide the name of the award, the organization that awarded it, and then the year in which you received it. If it's not obvious from the title of the award, include information that will tell the employer why you were honored. Include only those honors you've won in the past five years unless it's some remarkable recognition of national significance.
Some examples of how to list these individual awards:
- Phi Beta Kappa, elected to membership 1992.
- National Merit Scholarship Winner, 1991.
- Tri-County Triathlon Winner, Austin, Georgia, 1993.
9. Hobbies and outside interests
If you include it, this section should always appear last on your resume—it's the least important of your qualifications. Keep it short and simple; generally, one line will do:
Running, community theater, photography
Remember that you'll do better to list those hobbies likely to be perceived as potential additional benefits you can offer employers. And, as with social and professional affiliations, avoid mentioning controversial hobbies; your fixation with taxidermy or the occult probably won't win you any employment points.
Part II: The Functional Resume
Most elements in a functional resume are handled in the same manner as in a chronological resume, except for work experience and accomplishments. Instead of presenting a year-by-year accounting of your work whereabouts, you provide a listing of your experiences and accomplishments according to the area of skill. Here's the basic recipe for putting together this kind of resume.
1. The name header
Follow the same instructions as for a chronological resume.
2. The job objective and skills summary
Because employers may have a difficult time discerning your job goal from a functional resume, it's appropriate in most cases to include a job objective or skills summary.
Choose a job objective if you know precisely what type of job you want and if you are not interested in any other position. Write your objective according to the instructions given for the chronological resume.
If you opt to include a skills summary, provide a one or two-sentence statement that sums up your most important qualifications for the position you seek. The strongest summaries include the number of years of experience you have in particular areas you choose to highlight. If you don't have years of experience, you can simply say, "Strong background in..." or "Extensive experience in..."
To write your summary, refer to the rules explained earlier, in the chronological format section of this article.
3. The skill and experience profile
Treatment: Here's where the chronological and functional formats diverge. Don't list each position you have held, including responsibilities and accomplishments related to each.
Instead, divide your experience profile into general areas of skill, and briefly state experience, qualifications, and accomplishments related to each of those areas.
Construction: The first step is to decide what skill categories you will highlight. To do that, think about what skills would be most needed in the position you're seeking.
For example, suppose you're applying for a job as a supervisor at a day-care center. What general areas of expertise would be most important? Childcare, teaching, management and general business come to mind. Ideally, you would have at least some experience, qualifications and accomplishments to list in each of these areas. That experience might come from a combination of paid jobs, volunteer positions, and in-the-home responsibilities.
Under each skills-category heading, you should list four or five of your most impressive experiences or accomplishments.
Following is an example of how a portion of this resume might look on the page. Because childcare experience would be the most important qualification for this job, it is listed first on the resume, followed by management experience, which would be the second most important.
Childcare experience
- Provided in-home daycare for three preschoolers for two years.
- Assisted with toddler care in corporate day-care center.
- Cared for infants in a church nursery for two years.
- Developed "child file" system that made vital medical data on day-care children easier to access and maintain.
- Raised three children.
Management experience
- Supervised three cashiers as first-line supervisor in large discount store.
- Created employee scheduling procedure that resolved long-standing staffing conflicts.
- Named Employee of the Month for designing and implementing improved inventory-return system.
- Coordinated and directed activities of 100 PTA volunteers for annual fund-raising dinner for three years.
Notice how the bulleted points are a mix of experience statements and accomplishments. If you have more than one year of experience in any one area, you should highlight that by stating the specific number of years, as in the first bullet point under "Childcare Experience."
Experience timeline
According to some resume books, a "pure" functional resume does not include mention of the specific dates of your employment or work in volunteer groups. Some books say that it's even okay to leave off the names of employers. We, however, recommend otherwise. These pieces of information are important to employers. If you leave them off, you're going to raise suspicions. The employer's reasoning is, "Why would someone not mention those details unless she wanted to hide something?" You likely will be rejected from consideration on this basis alone.
The most effective functional resume includes a brief work experience profile stating your employment and volunteer history in chronological fashion. You don't have to emphasize this information, but you should include it.
It can be something as brief and simple as the following:
Work history
- Community volunteer and homemaker, Goshen, Georgia, 1990-present.
- Infant-care provider. Ml Saints Church, Goshen, Georgia, 1989-present.
- In-home day-care provider, Bethesda, Georgia, 1987-1989.
- Green Briar Elementary School PTA Fundraising committee, Bethesda, Georgia, 1987-1989.
- Head cashier. Brown's Hindi Mart, Bethesda, Georgia, 1984-1986.
4. Other Elements
All other elements of the resume, including education, special training, honors, and awards, etc., should be written in the same manner described earlier in under "Creating the Chronological Resume."
This extensive guide will help you to create a rough draft of your resume and to organize the critical information that will make you a competitive applicant.
