Resume Styles - what works best?

Welcome to our Career Services podcast.  Today we�ll examine resume styles and what style works best for your particular situation.  The type of resume style you select depends largely on your past work experience, skills and current career goal.

Chronological Resume
This is a summary of your work experience, lists your past jobs in date order with the most recent job first. A chronological resume organizes your professional experience around past positions and employers. It includes the name of the organization, the location (city and state), dates of employment, job responsibilities, duties and accomplishments in terms of benefits to the employer.  For each job you list, you include between 3-5 major duties and begin each bulleted sentence with an action verb. 
The chronological resume is preferred by employers and should be used if you: 
a.   Have a history of employment that shows stability
b. You�ve been working in the same field for awhile
c. You�ve had a steady upward progression of titles and levels of responsibility
d. You have not been a job-hopper

Functional Resume
This is a summary of your work experience organized around skill areas.  Skill areas are used as section headings.   Limit your skill headings to no more than five and use only skill headings that support your objective.  Examples of skill areas include:  

Accounting and Budgeting
Advertising & Marketing
Counseling & Advising
Management & Coordination 
Supervision
Teaching

Under each skill area you list the duties and specific job tasks performed and any accomplishments which demonstrate your proficiency.  Bullet each duty, job task and accomplishment and begin each bulleted sentence with an action verb. 

We recommend that you use a functional resume if:
a. You are changing careers
b. You have noticeable gaps in your employment history
c. You don�t have a great deal of experience related to the position you seek. 

Hybrid Resume
This resume combines the skills section of the functional resume and the employment history of the chronological resume.  The employment history is a short summary of your past employers, their name, location, and your job title.  If you have a solid work history, include the dates of employment as well.  Employment History follows immediately after the skills section. 

We recommend that career changers with a solid work history use a hybrid (combination) resume, which allows you to take the best parts of both functional and chronological formats and helps to position yourself in as positive a light as possible. 

Internships should be considered work experience and placed in the Work Experience section of the resume; however, you must indicate that it is an internship.