Choosing The Correct Format For Your Resume
Each resume follows a distinct format that allows their owners to effectively present themselves towards their prospective employers. Knowing the difference and advantages of each resume format gives you an edge on how you could create the most effective resume for yourself.
The most popular format that is being used today is no doubt, the chronological resume format. This format is also the easiest one to construct and follow. It contains your complete work history listed down in a reverse chronological order starting from your most recent job experience up to the first.
This format makes your reader’s job a bit more easier because they can easily see your career growth. The only bad thing about this format is that your reader can easily see any visible or obvious work gaps in your resume.
With that being said, this is where the functional resume format comes in to the rescue. This specific format allows the candidate to emphasize more in their skills, experience and qualifications. This formatting conceals your work history as well as your employment dates. Fresh graduates who have little or no experience may find themselves using this format along with individuals who have very long or multiple career gaps under their belts.
One downside of presenting you resume with in a functional format is that your reader will become suspicious about you hiding something from them. This often happens to people who are trying to shift careers or try fields and different industries.
The most effective presentation for your document would have to be the hybrid or combination resume format. Since it combines the benefits and advantages of both chronological and functional resume formatting, it is the best format of choice for those people who had been doing the same duties or line of work for a good number of years regardless of the number of jobs you have had or companies you had been under.
A new type of resume formatting most similar to the combination resume is called the technical resume format. Concisely tweaked information that contains multiple acronyms, buzzwords and keywords, this resume is most often used to land information technology or IT job positions.
Whether you choose either a chronological, functional or a hybrid formatting for your resume, keep in mind that a resume’s sole purpose is to win you an interview for the job, not the job itself. Through careful planning, proper writing and effective marketing of your skills and yourself, winning multiple invitations to job interviews are not impossible.
