Page 232 - Complete Idiot's Guide to The Perfect Resume

17 0028633946 CH14 12/21/99 11:48 AM Page 214

Part 3 ➤ So, You Need a Special Resume

Bonus Check
Telling the reader where an achievement took place increases the credibility of your
resume. If your resume has many achievements within a skill heading, avoid repeating the
same company name over and over. An efficient way to handle the “where” of your
achievements is to list them together under a subheading of the company name. After
you create company subheadings under your skill headings, prioritize your subheadings so
the most relevant one comes first.

Red Flags Down

Some employers don’t like functional resumes. They worry that a job
seeker who uses one is trying to hide something, and if they’re not
careful, they’ll end up with a problem employee on their hands. Red
flags on a resume might include the following:
Job-Hunt Hint ➤ Unexplained gaps in employment, which could indicate instabil-
ity due to personal problems
Subheadings of the functional
hybrid can be either the names ➤ A hard-to-follow presentation, which could be an attempt to
of the organizations where your hide something in the applicant’s past
accomplishments took place or ➤ An inappropriately long resume, which could mean the job
the job titles that you held
seeker is unorganized
when you completed your
achievements.
To relieve the fears of the employer and still use the functional format,
categorize the achievement statements under your skill headings
according to where they happened. That way the employer can easily
reference your subheadings with your Work History at the bottom of
the page.
Carmen Bishop’s functional hybrid (following) took advantage of the
functional format and put the reader’s mind at rest by organizing her
achievements under job-title subheadings. Her resume clearly shows
that she has the sales and project management skills to fulfill the
Terms of Employment employer’s expectations.
A red flag is anything on your
resume that looks fishy to Giving Order to Chaos
employers and might cause them
to discard your resume. Having a complicated work history (one that has concurrent employ-
ment, short-term jobs, or gaps) is one reason to use a functional
resume, because it downplays the sequence of events and throws the
spotlight on the important stuff: your transferable skills.

214