Are you looking for a new job? Or are you supposed to look for a job in the near future? If so, you will have to think about formulating or updating your existing resume. Before that, you must know that you need a strong resume to get considered for a job. With a weak resume, it is nearly impossible to land the dream job. Now, a question must spring to your mind: what makes a resume strong or weak? That is a valid question, and the answer is pretty simple. Your resume should have all the information required for the employer to know about your educational and professional background in the most structured manner. Structure, yes the structure is a critical element that determines how you offer the extract of information that is easy to comprehend.
A resume has three essential types based on the structure: Chronological, functional, and chrono-functional or hybrid resume. So before discussing chrono-functional resumes thoroughly, let us get an overview of other types for better understanding.
Types of Resume:
1. Chronological Resume:
A chronological resume is a kind of resume that focuses on your work experience. It lists down the professional work history in reverse order. For example, it begins with the current job and ends with the very first job. It is the most common type of resume, acceptable in most industries. The benefit of this resume is that it offers the employer a quick overview of your professional experience and tells how you have evolved professionally. Also, it puts the recent work experience at the top, which is more relevant to the recruiters. It helps the recruiters find the current position you are holding.
Who should use it?
This kind of resume must be used by those who have some professional experience. However, the fresh graduates with no experience cannot use the chronological resume as they do not have any experience to list down.
Sample of Chronological Resume:
2. Functional Resume:
A functional resume mainly focuses on skills, strengths, and achievements(if any). It omits the dates and does not follow a chronological order. It offers the employer an overview of your skills and strengths to identify if they fulfil specific criteria.
Who should use it?
A functional resume is a resume used by fresh graduates who have little or no professional work experience. This format helps them to highlight their skills and strengths to appeal to the employer. However, this format is not useful for those with lots of professional experience as their work experience speaks itself about their abilities and strengths.
Sample of Functional Resume:
Click here to find various resume samples that will help you differentiate between chronological and functional resumes.
3. Chrono-functional or Hybrid Resume:
Last but not least, a chrono-functional resume, also known as a hybrid resume, is an amalgamation of a chronological and functional resume. It focuses on the skills and strengths while also offering enough space to list work experience. A chrono-functional resume is a better option compared to a chronological or functional resume to provide a balanced overview of skills and experience.
Who should use it?
It can be used by those who intend to highlight both skills and work experience. It is the most used resume that offers a comprehensive and straightforward overview of skills and work experience. Sometimes, your work experience does not use the skills and strengths you have. So using this resume, you can pinpoint those skills for a relevant job. The following job seekers can use this format:
- Career changers:
The Chrono-functional resume works well for candidates who wish to change their career or department of work. Such people may have lots of experience, but that doesn’t match their aspired job. In such a scenario, the candidates can amalgamate the relevant skills and work experience to be considered by the recruiter.
- Fresh graduates:
The fresh graduates with no experience can also use this format to land a job. In the work experience, they can add their leadership roles, volunteer works, and internships and in addition to the skills.
- Veterans:
Veterans with a vast set of skills and experience may find it difficult to encapsulate on one paper. They can create a resume with a Chrono-functional format in such a scenario, adding the relevant skills and experiences according to a job requirement.
- Candidates with significant gaps in employment:
Due to some reasons, people have to take long breaks from employment; these breaks can be months or years long. When applying for a job, their recent job gets relatively outdated. Therefore, such candidates can use a Chrono-functional format.
How to write a Chrono-functional resume?
To write the Chrono-functional resume, you will first need to understand the elements that need to be included. You can design your Chrono-functional resume by incorporating the following elements:
- Name and Contact information:
- Summary/Objective
- Skills
- Professional History
- Education
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Name and Contact Info:
The first thing that goes into any resume be it functional, chronological, or hybrid, is the contact information. You must add your name on the top or on the right, according to the layout design you pick. It is essential to mention your phone number and email address in the contact information, as they are means of contact. However, it is optional to add a postal address and links to online portfolios.
Summary/ Objective:
It is an essential part of a hybrid resume that is mostly overlooked. It is a personal statement that sets the tone for your resume. It must be concise, precise, and to the point. If the statement is long and hard to read, it will be ignored by the recipient. Such personal statements loathe employers, but if it is clear and provides a quick context, they will get a good first impression. The essential things you can include in a summary are skills and experience, and short-term goals.
Skills and abilities:
This section of the resume must include the relevant skills and abilities for the job. You must give equal or almost equal weightage to skills and abilities to the professional experience in a hybrid resume. Make sure you mention the credentials or certificates you have earned for a skill. Also, like the professional experience, don’t bulk your resume with unnecessary or irrelevant skills. It is essential to list down the essential skills required for a job. For example, you must need skills related to Illustrator, InDesign, or Photoshop for a graphic designer job. Adding writing skills, swimming skills, and teaching skills to resume would be unnecessary.
Professional History:
Then comes one of the essential parts of a chrono-functional resume: professional history. This section will list the work experience, mostly in chronological order, like the chronological resume. So, for example, you can start adding your current work experience and going back to the first job experience. One thing that you need to be careful about is adding the relevant experience. If you are applying for a radiologist job and adding the work experience of a marketeer, that would be insignificant and may negatively affect the application. One thing that applicants do wrong is sending the same resume for different kinds of jobs. Resumes must be modified for each job; you should add relevant experiences for increasing your chance of getting considered for a job.
Education:
In the hybrid resume, you will add education in order. The education, like the professional experience, must be listed in reverse order. For example, you will start with the latest degree you earned and go back to high school. Make sure to mention the achievements, if any. For example, you can add the distinction you have achieved or your GPA. Remember, this information can strengthen your application. So make sure you do not avoid any significant detail. However, it is also essential to avoid jumbling your resume with lots of details and information. An effective resume is one page long, and you must try not to exceed the limit.
Pro tip: You can avail of resume writing services to get a professionally written Chrono-functional resume.
Chrono-functional Resume Sample:
Tips for writing Chrono-function Resume:
- Combine your key skills into professional history:
You can intelligently mix your skills into professional history to let the reviewer realize how you endeavoured your skills into work and how your skills provided benefit to your previous organization.
- Prioritize skills required by the employer:
Make sure you do your research about the job requirements before creating or formatting a resume. The research findings will help you streamline your skills according to the needs of the recruiter and job.
- Use proper formatting:
Proper formatting is a highly essential part of a resume. Make sure you use a standard font like Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, Helvetica, or Georgia. Also, avoid using bigger or smaller than 11 or 12 point font.
The 6-60-6 rule for writing a Resume:
Keep the 6-60-6 rule in mind while writing the chrono-functional resume.
The 6-60-6 rule indicate:
6- Six seconds
60- Sixty seconds
6- Six hours
It means that your resume must be organized, well-structured, and a comprehensive document. If the reviewer looks at it for six seconds, he should skim all the key points. It means that the essential points in the document must stand out that come with a good structure. Also, if the reviewer reads the resume for sixty seconds, that is one minute, he can maintain his focus and consider your resume. And if the reviewer keeps looking at the resume for six hours, he must be unable to find any flaws, which means that it should be void of grammatical mistakes.
So, the 6-60-6 rule tells us that the resume should have a good structure, content and be free of errors.
Strengths of Chrono-function Resume:
- A Chrono-function resume is a resume that directs the reader’s eyes to essential information of the resume that you want to highlight. It is a very specific resume catering to the requirements of a particular job.
- It helps you target the requirement of the employer. For example, if the employer has emphasized that he wants high technical writing skills, you will formulate your resume, stressing the employer’s required skills.
- This resume format helps you omit unnecessary or subordinate skills and work history that do not support your objective.
Keeping all the information and guidelines above in consideration, you can create your perfect chrono-functional resume; However, you can also get the services of ResumeCroc to avail of the services of highly professional resume writers.