From the course: Writing a Resume

The functional resume

From the course: Writing a Resume

The functional resume

- Functional resumes, elicit many questions. And the biggest one is what is a functional resume? But before we answer that question, do you know what a chronological resume is? Today I'm going to help you learn the appropriate terminology for your resume of choice. How to tell the difference between a chronological and a functional resume? And when to use one instead of the other. Odds are that if you have a resume, it is in a chronological format. This means that your professional experience is placed on your resume in the order that it happened. Although with resumes, your most current experience is most important. And therefore it appears first, which is actually in reverse chronological order. I mentioned this so I can compare it with the functional resume, which works a little differently. Your professional experience is displayed by function and skill rather than by the date you performed the function. The major difference is that the experience could have come from when you first started your career, or it could have been obtained a few days prior to you writing the resume, which is why recruiters don't usually like functional resumes. Even though you will include a work history or employment history section, it is not apparent at what point in your career, you perform the skill you're mentioning as shown in the example, in the exercise files, your work history section will include the employer's name, your job title, the city and state, where you worked along with the dates worked. I hope that right now you're asking yourself if recruiters don't like functional resumes, why would I ever use one? A common example is in the case of someone who has worked for a number of years for the same company, but as moved around within that company, in that case, a functional resume will work well for you. It will also be helpful to you. If you have had a long career in the same industry, even if you have changed jobs a number of times finally a functional resume will be a great tool for you to use. If you're changing careers and want to showcase experience, you have it isn't immediately apparent from your job titles. Let's start with an example from someone who worked for the same company for 15 years, let's assume Joe worked for company X as an administrative assistant in the contracts department for three years. Then he became the assistant to a VP who after a year moved into the marketing and PR department. Joe essentially became a PR assistant and learned a lot about that field. But then the VP left the company and Joe transferred into the marketing department as an account manager. He worked in marketing for five years. Then an opportunity opened up to work at the Liaison for the company's largest client. And since he had contract experience, he began drafting marketing related contracts. When that client switched vendors, Joe applied internally and got a job as a contracts administration manager. And that's what he's been doing for the last year or so. How many skills or functions will Joe list on his functional resume? He has experienced as an administrative assistant, a PR assistant and accounts manager in marketing he's drafted contracts, and now he's managing other contract specialists. If I were Joe, I would list the following headings, general office administration, contract drafting and management and marketing and PR. But this is just one way to do this. The important thing about a functional resume is the headings. Name them something that will be important to the reader and relevant to the job to which you're applying. The detailed below would include descriptions of these positions, the software you've used, the industries you have knowledge of the numbers of credit memos you were able to process in a day, et cetera. This is both an excellent feature and a difficult one to master because you have a lot of choice in how you display your information. For those of you who have had a long career in the same industry, a functional resume is helpful because it prevents you from having to write the same thing repeatedly on your resume. Use your creativity. If you can think of other reasons to use a functional resume, go for it.

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