Page 218 - Complete Idiot's Guide to The Perfect Resume

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Part 3 ➤ So, You Need a Special Resume

Climbing Higher

If you want to use your resume to get a position that’s a rung higher
on your career ladder, use the chronological hybrid. Its skill
subheadings will help the employer understand right away that you’ve
already acquired and used the skills required for your job objective.
There’s no set number of bullet-point statements that should follow a
Career Casualty skill subheading, but here’s my rule of thumb: You can have as few as
Be sure to use skill subheadings one or as many as eight.
that paint the picture of you For example, Gireesh Vaid had worked her way up to vice president
performing your next job. Follow within a prominent nonprofit organization. When the position for
the brainstorming techniques in president opened up, she decided to go for it. Using a chronological
Chapter 9, “Step Four: You’re an hybrid (following), she showed off her recent success in the company
Achiever!” to come up with skills and used skill subheadings to demonstrate that she had the skills for
that support your job objective. the new job.

Variations on a Theme

If you want to continue with the same kind of work you’ve been doing
but you want to change industries, the chronological hybrid can be a
great promotional tool for you. This format will encourage the
employer to identify you by your job titles and skills, even though
your work history is from a different industry.
Job-Hunt Hint
Tyler Zahn had been in management positions in the newspaper busi-
If you find that you have a
ness for years. When he decided to transfer his management skills to a
lot of accomplishments listed
new industry, he chose the chronological hybrid format (following). In
under a job heading in your
a flash, the employer saw that Tyler had honed valuable leadership
chronological resume, break
abilities, even though he had not held typical manager titles.
them down into smaller groups.

Bonus Check
Looking for a way to save space on your resume? Try formatting your bullet-point state-
ments into paragraphs (so that one statement follows another in each paragraph with
bullet points separating the statements, as demonstrated in Gireesh’s resume) with a skill
subheading to introduce each paragraph. This format gives your resume a polished, concise
look and draws the reader’s attention to your strengths.

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