TYPES OF RÉSUMÉS AND SAMPLES

TYPES OF RÉSUMÉS AND SAMPLES

	DESCRIPTION	USES	PROBLEMS
CHRONOLOGICAL	Experiences presented in reverse chronological order.	Highlights progressive work experience.  Is most traditional and easiest to construct and understand. Best for those who have significant experience in the field where they are seeking a job.	Less effective if changing careers, have little work experience or need to draw a connection between an experience and a job that seem unrelated.  Can cause an older but highly relevant experience to get buried at the end.
MODIFIED CHRONOLOGICAL	Experiences are grouped based on type (technical experience, research experience, leadership experience, etc.) and are listed chronologically within these categories.	Can combat a problem chronological résumés have by allowing a less recent but highly relevant experience to appear at the top.  Also, the categories may help the reader contextualize an experience that may initially seem irrelevant.	May be difficult to categorize experiences.
FUNCTIONAL	The descriptions for several different experiences are grouped by skills (leadership skills, organizational skills, management skills, etc.) and the actual titles and dates of the experiences are listed at the top or bottom of the résumé.	Good for job changers, those with little work experience or those with gaps in employment history.	Employers often don’t like this format. It can be confusing because the relationship between a skill and an experience can be lost. Generally not recommended.
COMBINATION	List your past experiences chronologically but classify the descriptions used within these experiences by sets of skills (leadership skills, analytical skills, communication skills, technical skills, etc.).	Excellent for people with 1-3 extensive experiences that used multiple skills.  Also very useful in drawing connections between experiences that don’t appear relevant but do use transferable skills.	Sometimes hard to classify skills used within a particular experience.