Stop With The Functional Resume Already
It happened just as I said it would. He didn’t believe me at first, but after this experience he changed his mind.
I told my candidate his resume was a show stopper. In other words, I told him to expect a “no interest” from my client if we moved forward with a functional resume. I couldn’t convince him to change to a chronological resume format and usually I elect not to even proceed, but in this case I wanted to prove a point as well as continue my testing of whether functional resumes get more rejections that the preferred chronological resume.[private]
My tests have generally resulted in a 403% greater rejection rate for functional resumes. Not odds you want to face if you’re a serious job seeker.
Within two hours of sending his functional resume to my client, I received a short and pretty blunt email. The email read in part, “Either send us a chronological resume, or we’ll pass.” End of story.
The good news is he got a second chance. Had he sent his resume directly to the employer it would have gone into the resume reject shredder.
Save your resume from the reject shredder
Over the past couple of years I’ve started to see quiet a lot of functional resumes and they are always a concern for me.
To put it bluntly they rarely, if ever, work for job hunters.
Here are some of the key reasons why, but if you want even more insight you should check out my 15 Free Video series at my companion website Essential Resume Strategies where you’ll discover how to write a resume that gets interviews.
To begin with a functional resume lumps all of your skills and achievements onto the front page, with little mention of which employer is related to each accomplishment. In other words, it is impossible to get a “trend over time” correlation and understand if the most recent work is related to the job needs, or if it occurred years ago.
Often accomplishments that occurred years ago, but which might be more relevant to the current job requirements likely would have used different technology and/or processes making them less relevant.
Then, in the Work History section, you’ll find a listing something like this:
Accounting Manager, Company A, Dallas, TX, 2006-Present
Accounting Supervisor, Company B, Kansas City, KS, 2003-2006
Financial Analyst, Company C, Oklahoma City, OK, 1998-2003
…and so on, with absolutely no detail associated with each job.
As I mentioned above, hiring managers have rightfully developed a strong distrust for a functional resume. They’re often the reason you never get a response at all.
Worse still, many professional resume writers are selling the functional resume format with little regard to whether it works or not. To some extent, professional resume writers don’t really know what works, or why even if they’ve been doing that type of work for a long, long time.
There is only one resume writing service that I ever recommend and you can see them here. And there is only one source for a great selection of resume templates and they can be found here.
I’m starting to see the resurgence of functional resumes - and this is a critical concern of mine, since they rarely, if EVER, work for job hunters.[/private]
Backtracking for a moment, the functional resume slaps all your skills and achievements onto the front page, with little mention of which employer is related to each accomplishment.
Then, in the ensuing sections, the work history is listed like this:
Operations Manager, Company A, Denver, CO, 2005-Present
Operations Supervisor, Company B, Chicago, IL, 2000-2005
Process Improvement Analyst, Company C, Littleton, CO, 1992-2000
…and so on, with NO detail under each job.
As I’ve mentioned here before, hiring managers have rightfully developed a strong distaste for these documents. After all, they seem to be “hiding” something with the lack of descriptions for each job, plus the detail all lumped together.
If you’re trying to minimize job hopping or unrelated work experience, STOP. Take the time to analyze how you can connect your career path to the job you seek.
After all, every role you’ve held (yes, even the not-so-great ones) has prepared you for your current set of qualifications. Surely you can find a way to describe your job chronology in a way that makes sense.
Plus, you’ll need to prepare this information for the interview anyway.
Create your resume in the classic, reverse chronological format, and pull out some selected achievements to display in the top of your document–that is, if you want RESULTS.
If you’re stuck on how to fill in a career gap, search this blog or google for my articles on that subject. It’s a lot easier than you think!
