Resume Styles – Functional Format

There’s a lot of confusion out there about functional resumes. While the basics are consistent, the implementations vary greatly. And to make things worse, there’s often the confusion of functional resumes with skill-based resumes, targeted resumes, accomplishment resumes, combination resumes, and many others. In my opinion, these are all format variants of either the chronological or the functional resumes. I’ve discussed chronological resumes earlier, so next we need to frame the style and purpose of the functional resume. For now, suffice it to say that a functional resume touts your talents up front and your actual job history is minimized (or sometimes eliminated).

For a very large majority of job seekers, the chronological resume is the format of choice. And I suggest that everyone first develops one of these and try to make it work. But for some people with various work history challenges or unique career goals, a functional resume is truly a reasonable choice. So what events in your career history should point you to a functional format? Here are a few reasons and examples:

• Making a dramatic career change  – sales rep becomes a nurse, retiring veteran or pro sportsman
• Entering the workforce – a young graduate with no work experience in the chosen degree field
• Excessive career gaps – independent consultant, parent returning to work, job hopper
• Overqualified or senior citizen – wanting to downplay age or have less responsibility

The functional resume starts like all other resumes with the Contact information section. Put your name (first and last), your phone (cell), your e-mail (personal, not business), and your address (at least city & state) at the top in any reasonably professional format.

The Objective statement is next. Yes, we need an objective line with the functional format. Not the old “I want you to hire me so I can live comfortably on your dime until I retire”, but a strong statement, something like “An award-winning Sales Rep with 10 years of experience in the Telecom and IT community, looking to lead a small sales team or small marketing department”. This element of the resume is important, because with the functional format the reader is dependent on the story that you’re telling, not the history of your work experience. This statement sets up the story that follows.

The Summary of experience (or qualifications) is the most critical part of the functional resume. This is a paragraph (or 3-5 bullets) that spins the tale of your talent, experience, and qualifications. These are major points that tell how well you could address the objective statement above.  The statements are focused specifically on your target career, relevant to the job title you’re pursuing, and show off just a couple of your strongest talents. Because resume reviewers seldom read an entire resume, this Summary has actually found its way onto the chronological resumes since it so succinctly states your talents and objectives. This is the section of the functional resumes that needs the most attention paid to it…since this is often where a resume reviewer or recruiter quits reading most resumes.

Since your functional resume is more about your skills and talents and less about your history and progressions, the next section is usually a Skills or Talent or Expertise section. Here you might have a sub-section on project management and call out the major roles, accomplishments and successes you’ve had as a project manager. The next sub-section is your next skill, for example, systems analyst, and you again point out your strengths with this still. Please note that the skills need to be complementary…you’re focusing on talents that tie into your Objective statement. This is not the place to list disparate talents or to focus on irrelevant skills. Make sure that for each sub-section that you’ve listed you need to have between 2-4 bullets (or sentences if you prefer the paragraph format) that draw from your prior work experience. You might identify the company you did that work for if you think the name of the firm would be beneficial to the story you’re developing. Two or three skill sub-sections is the usual norm, but I’ve seen more on occasions.

Work History is often the next section, but this is where the functional format agreement usually ends. With a speckled job history (or none at all), this section could be left out of the resume. If you have a moderately contiguous employment history, then you would list it. For example, if you had been in the Air Force for 16 years as an artillery specialist, worked for 8 years as a machinist and line manager in an auto factory, just finished getting your MBA, and now wanted to switch to a management position in a government agency, this section might look like:

Work History

U. S. Air Force, retired as Master Sergeant, 1985-2001

Ford Motor Company, Manager, 2001-2009

Notice that there are no details regarding the tasks or roles you performed at these two jobs. The functional resume presents only minimal job-related data so as to keep the discussion focused around the Skills and Experience sections above. Optionally you might list the city and state of the positions if you feel this is relevant to your objective. If you have had several jobs, lots of job gaps, or overlapping contracting gigs, you might list the firms, the title, the location, and leave off the dates. Oh…if you call the section “Relevant Work History” you can list only the jobs that are relevant (no dates), leaving out jobs that would be a distraction to your objective.

The Education section is actually an optional section. Most firms today want most of their employees to have degrees, especially at the higher levels of position in their firms. But, for those of you without a degree, the functional format works well. Still, I suggest keeping this section in the resume if you have a degree.

There are a few other optional sections…Training/Development, Awards, Certifications, Organizations, etc. These are added only if they strengthen the storyline you set in the Objective statement.

Bottomline: The functional resume is for those that have work situations that a chronological formatted resume can’t adequately address.  Be aware that most recruiters are a bit suspicious about a functional resume, since it is usually used to hide various employment issues. I suggest you spend some time reviewing as many samples of functional resumes as you can, but remember, the key to making this type of resume work is to keep it focused on a very narrow objective and have all elements of the resume supporting the objective.

Resume Styles – Chronological Format

At one time there was just the simple chronological resume…and everyone had one. It started off with your contact information across the top, an objective statement, a reverse chronological listing of your career history, your college education, and maybe closing with organizations or awards.  This format accounted for over 95% of all resumes about 10 years ago. It was clear, easy to read, and structurally simple to format.  But times have changed…and so must the classic chronological resume.

Let me first state that the basic chronological format hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s the general improvements in resume writing and formatting that has kept this classic resume style alive. That, and the numerous online job search sites that request, store, and present your resume in their preferred chronological layout that keep this format the most popular. Still, we can make some slight improvements over the old tried-and-true format and have a very nice looking resume!

Your resume starts with your Contact Information, which is usually kept simple and clear. Include your first and last name, your phone number, your e-mail address and at least your city, state, and zip code – your street address is optional. The layout isn’t predefined, but centering your name with the other elements all on a single line below your name would be a fine start.

In most cases today the Objective Line has been done away with unless you are writing the resume for a very specific job or if the objective line is used more as a mini-summary statement (which I like). If you are open for a variety of positions and are going to use a summary statement (below), you can leave the objective line off.

The Summary Statement is the newest piece of information of this format. It is either a multi-sentence or a multi-bullet section — it’s just 4-5 lines that provides a mini-commercial of your skills, talents, and successes. This section was actually taken from the functional resume format (we’ll discuss this format later) to help the reader get a quick idea of who you are and what strengths you might have.  Note that some online resume systems don’t have a place for this summary, so you may need to make sure that you address these points carefully within the respective career history sections.

Career history, presented in reverse chronological order, is the next section and also the namesake of this format. You list your title, your company, the time you were with the company (mm/yyyy – mm/yyyy format is preferred), and optionally the city and state of the job, all on 1 or 2 lines and usually in bold print. Then below this is where you point out your major activities, the successes, any measurable accomplishments – preferably using a STAR writing style. It can either be paragraphs or bullets, but I suggest using a little of both – a 2-3 sentence paragraph followed by 2-4 bullets.  List your jobs back at least 8 years, but not more than 15. Yes, this is important…the old stuff is not generally something that will “sell” you…save it for your cover letter or your interview.

Your Degree Information will follow your career history. And before you’re all done, you might also add the optional sections of awards, groups, activities, or other job-related, career-related or industry-related information (no hobbies, no personal stuff, etc.).

My suggestion is that everyone should have a chronological resume. Even if you’re inclined to use a different resume format for various reasons or situations, there will always be a need to have your resume available in the chronological layout.

Bottomline: The Chronological format is the classic form for a resume. But it’s not the layout that’s the challenge, it’s the quality of the writing and use of engaging text that can still make this format work. In future articles I’ll cover the other (less popular) formats. But for now, even if you eventually use another format, create a chronological format version of your resume…it will be the one most often requested by the online job sites.