Choose the Best Format For Your Resume
By John J. Marcus
Job hunters are inundated with advice on how to describe their
background so they can land interviews in this tight job market. They're
offered a slew of resume formats, which makes the choice especially difficult.
Don't be discouraged. The list of formats can be narrowed to three
that most job seekers use to present their credentials. They are:
Each format has advantages and disadvantages. Which you choose
should depend on the circumstances of your search. These will determine the
purpose of your document and dictate how you should organize your credentials.
Regardless of the type of format you select, your goal is the same: to win a
job interview. To effectively market your candidacy to hiring managers, review
the following rationale for using each of the three formats and tips on how to
construct them.
The Chronological Resume
Its name a misnomer, the
chronological resume actually presents work experience in
reverse-chronological order, so that your current or most recent employer is
listed first.
This type of presentation is the top choice of almost all
recruiters, hiring managers and human-resources professionals because it's so
easy to read. Information is organized in such a way that a reviewer can scan
the document and quickly gain a good understanding of your career progression,
including the types of companies you've worked for, dates of employment, job
titles and, most important, your responsibilities and accomplishments. It's the
format most professionals should plan on using in their job searches.
When writing a chronological resume, here's how to describe your
background so you'll set up multiple interviews.
·
Start at the top of the resume with an introductory section that
briefly summarizes your key strengths and contributions. Two to four sentences
will suffice. Effective headers for this section are Profile, Summary, Career
Summary and Summary of Qualifications.
·
Use the next section to discuss your work experience. Begin with
the name of your current or most recent employer, followed by the city and
state where it's located, and your dates of employment. Provide a short
description of the company's business, including, if possible, its annual
revenues (for instance, "$100 million commercial PVC pipe maker").
Follow this with your job title and a brief summary of your
responsibilities. Include the total number of people you oversee, the total who
report directly to you and the size of your budget.
Next comes the most critical information on your resume: your
accomplishments, listed by each position you held. Cite these successes by
their importance to the type of position you're seeking. Begin each statement
with a past-tense verb (e.g., "initiated"), preceded by a bullet.
Also be sure to quantify your achievements so readers will understand their
scope. Numbers provide impact and credibility. Additionally, discuss anything
new or different you did. Nothing is more important than demonstrating
innovation.
Be succinct when wording your accomplishments. The less you say,
the greater the impact of what you do say.
The advantage of the chronological format (in addition to it being
the preferred type of presentation) is that it automatically showcases
progressive growth when you've held increasingly responsible positions. The
chronological approach is especially effective if your current or most recent
position indicates you have outstanding qualifications to perform the job you
seek.
But a chronological resume will be less successful in generating
interviews if your most recent position is unrelated to the type of job you're
pursuing or you have held a string of unrelated positions. Job hunters who have
such a background often use a functional resume format to present their
credentials.
The Functional Resume
Functional
resumes discuss work experience according to functional strengths, not
employers. The emphasis is on what someone has done, not where and when the
work was done. This enables a job hunter to immediately highlight certain talents
and accomplishments, while concealing the types of liabilities that the
chronological format would automatically showcase. When constructing a
functional resume, you would:
·
Begin with a short introductory section, as described in the
chronological-resume section.
·
Then discuss your successes, grouping them in three to five
functions.
For example, a financial executive could detail achievements in
"Corporate Finance," "Mergers & Acquisitions,"
"Cost Reduction," and "IPOs."
A human-resources executive could list accomplishments in
"Organizational Development," "Training,"
"Compensation & Benefits," "Recruitment," and
"Labor Relations."
A sales-and-marketing executive could discuss achievements in
"Strategic Planning," "Key Account Growth," "New
Market Penetration," "New Product Development & Launch," and
"Advertising & Sales Promotion."
The format also allows you to present strengths in completely
different functions, such as "General Management" and
"Finance."
To discuss successes in this format, briefly describe and quantify
your accomplishments, as described above.
·
Conclude with a section entitled Employment History. Here, list
the names of your employers, their locations, and your dates of employment.
Stating job titles is optional, depending on whether this information would be
beneficial.
While the functional resume does a superb job of immediately
drawing attention to key strengths and achievements, it's at a potentially huge
cost. Many executive recruiters and employers won't read this type of resume,
because they're familiar with the format and know that they won't be able to
find out when and where an applicant's accomplishments occurred. Equally
important, many employers and recruiters are aware that applicants who are
trying to conceal serious liabilities in their backgrounds sometimes use
functional resumes, thus giving them another reason to set such documents
aside.
Functional formats are especially ineffective nowadays because
there's an abundance of talented executives presenting their experience in the
highly preferred chronological style. Recruiters and employers have the luxury
of reading only those resumes that immediately appeal to them and discarding
the rest.
The Hybrid
The
hybrid resume compensates for the functional resume's deficiency in
explaining when and where successes occurred.
·
Begin the document as you would a functional resume, with an
introductory section followed by a discussion of accomplishments grouped by job
functions.
·
Next, add an experience section similar to that on a chronological
resume.
In this way, you highlight key successes, while also showing when
and where they occurred, so you don't appear to be trying to disguise your background.
Unfortunately, most resumes get only an initial glance and aren't
read in their entirety. Since the hybrid resume begins with the functional
approach, many people won't read it all the way through.
Consider Your Circumstances
Unless you have an unblemished background, a resume isn't the
perfect device for presenting work experience. In fact, the greater the number
of liabilities a job hunter has, the less this document can be relied upon for
producing interviews. This is especially the case when responding to Internet
postings, answering print ads, or conducting a mass mailing to prospective
employers or recruiters. In these cases, you'll always face formidable
competition from job hunters whose resumes contain no background deficiencies.
If your resume highlights serious liabilities in your work
experience, you'll need to spend much more time networking. If you develop
leads for interviews through networking contacts, your resume will be less
important in gaining access to prospective employers and recruiters. Instead,
these people will want to meet you because of the glowing comments from your
referrals. Their remarks will give you immediate credibility and minimize the
deficiencies in your background.
When deciding which of these formats to use, consider your target
audience and which type presents the strongest case for your candidacy. One
approach may help in some situations but not in others. Consequently, having
two versions of your resume may best meet your needs.
-- Mr. Marcus is a career counselor and resume writer in
Article from CareerJournal.
September 2004