The Chronological Resume Format
One of the three main types and most widely used formats when creating a resume is the chronological resume format. This specific type of resume accentuates your job skills and accomplishments as well as the consistency, depth, and amount of work experience that you have amassed since the beginning of your career. It also determines how well tuned your past work experience is towards the job that you are currently aiming for.
Credibility is by far the strongest factor that the chronological format has to offer. Due to the fact that it lays down all the information via a specific time frame, it is obviously more fact-based since your reader can literally keep track of everything in your career as the time progresses. Also, they can easily track down not only your job position or title, it can also show them the different organizations you had worked for in the past.
Of course, alongside the advantages, there are also disadvantages. With this specific formatting, it is very easy for your prospective employer to see if you had been frequently switching from one company to another. It also makes the gaps in your career seem obvious since the format lays down the whole of your career’s lifetime right in front of them. Lastly, it will be impossible for you to hide your age specifically to employers looking for a certain age bracket for their employees.
With this to your knowledge, the ups and downs of a chronological resume lies within the format itself. By using a reverse chronological order as its built-in time line sequence, it is easy for your employer to spot many critical aspects to determine if you are a viable candidate or not.
Like most resumes, the chronological resume starts off with a header that includes your full name and contact information consisting of your street address, land line or mobile number and then your personal email address.
Right next to your personal information is your educational background. It is important for this section to be early on the front page because most jobs today has a list of their “required” educational backgrounds to fit in with whatever those job openings may be. Similar to the title of your formatting, this section too, also has to follow the reverse chronological order of your job experience.
After your educational background, next in line would be your professional work experience. Keep in mind that the format should present the candidate’s career history in a sequence where in the reader can easily skim or run through the document without missing critical information such as the previous company that the candidate was employed with, the inclusive dates he or she has worked with them, their previous position held in that company, and lastly, what they did in that company. Here is an example:
X Trading International, 1995 to 2000
Customer Service Manager
Directed a 15-person customer service department which included managing, hiring, and training staff.
Managed a customer service staff responsible for the handling of calls from both the customers and field sales representatives, processing of incoming orders, and coordinating of shipments.
Y Industries Incorporated, 1992 to 1995
Inside Sales for Direct Accounts
In charge of tracking and managing machine allocations for the company.
Had handled customer-related issues, processed incoming orders and coordinated shipments.
As for the last section of your resume, a bulleted list of educational honors, certifications and professional licenses will best fit in to your document. This will not only add in more credibility to your account, but this will also improve your chances for winning that interview especially if you have awards or certifications that some employers are specifically looking for in a potential candidate.
If ever you are having doubts about using the chronological format as your resume of choice, keep in mind that there are still two more formats that you could use to fit in your need. Every format has its advantage, its best to know which formatting would compliment what you have so that you can get the upper hand as well as those interviews coming in.
