Page 82 - Complete Idiot's Guide to The Perfect Resume

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Part 1 ➤ Plan to Succeed

Skills Up Front and Center

Beverly Jensen was an accomplished language instructor with years of
experience teaching at the college level. (Her resume follows.) The
functional resume worked well for her because it presented the skills
she’d used in her many teaching positions in concise statements under
skill headings. In a chronological format, she would have been forced
Job-Hunt Hint
to repeat these statements for each position she held.
To shorten a resume that has a
If you’ve held many positions that carried similar responsibilities (for
lengthy work history filled with
instance, as a teacher or therapist), and you need an efficient way of
repetitious experiences, switch
presenting your experience, the functional resume may be the way to
from a chronological to a func-
go. By grouping statements under the functional resume’s skill head-
tional format. The employer will
ings, you eliminate redundant statements in each job listing through-
appreciate your ability to organ-
out your work history.
ize material efficiently.
Reentry with Force
After being a full-time mom for three years, Chris Montoya felt she
was ready to go back into the workforce. She had filled her three
unemployed years with volunteer work (in addition to parenting) and
wanted to continue in a nonprofit environment, this time for pay. The
following functional resume shows how she presented her relevant
achievements in the body of the resume and referred to her volun-
Career Casualty teerism and parenting in her Work History section.
If you were unemployed while being a full-time parent, you can list
Don’t let anyone tell you that
“Full-time Parent” as a job title under Work History in your functional
you didn’t do anything for the
resume to avoid a gap in dates. After all, parenting is a full-time job,
last so-many years because you
even though you didn’t draw a salary from it.
were a full-time parent. You
worked hard and developed
many useful skills. So use a func- Long, Long Ago
tional resume that includes par-
enting in your Work History Donald Toni wanted to combine the sales skills he’d developed at the
section to fill an employment beginning of his career with the administrative skills he’d used in his
gap with dignity. recent set of jobs. By using a functional resume (following), he was able
to highlight his early career achievements by placing them under the
prominent Sales skill heading. Notice that his two skill headings
(Administration and Sales) added up to his Job Objective (Sales Service Administrator).
Pretty cool, huh?
If you have valuable experience that would get buried at the bottom of a chronological
resume, create a functional resume so that you can prioritize that experience near the top of
your skills sections.

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