One of the things that surprised me most when I first started reading recruiting blogs (which was only shortly after I got into recruiting) was the vehemence with which my fellow bloggers bashed the functional resume. Being but a recruiting noob myself, I was still blinded by my college career center’s advice that it was a perfectly valid format, ideal for showing skills in a way that makes the most out of limited experience.
But in another few months, I realized, the functional resume DOES suck. I’ve only got one talent with a decent, workable functional resume, but he’s a technical freelancer and his resume doesn’t require tons of context. Every other functional resume I’ve ever seen leaves me feeling like I really don’t have any idea what the candidate has spent their career doing.
Even so, the functional format does seem better suited than the chronological format to the task of showing transferrable skills, especially for career changers or people who are trying to turn a scattered series of jobs into a coherent professional progression. So what can be done to fix the problem?
My colleagues and I put our heads together and found what we believe to be an excellent way to combine the very legitimate goal of the functional resume with the much more high-context and readable chronological format. I’m sure we’re not the first ones to come up with it, but we’ve never seen any of our candidates use this method, so it’s clearly time to share it with you.
Start with a chronological resume. Under your most recent jobs, write 1-2 unbulleted sentences to summarize what your job was. Then take all your bullets and divide them into functional areas like “business development” or “account management” or whatever is relevant. If you’re changing careers, make sure these functional areas are relevant to the job you want. The point here is to make abundantly clear to any hiring manager or overworked HR generalist how your existing experience relates to the new career you want.
For example, from my own resume:
[Recruiter] ~ [MISF] ~ Washington, DC ~ January 2005-present
In dual role as both recruiter and account manager, match qualified IT and Interactive Media professionals with client job openings for temporary and permanent placement at a variety of agency, association, and commercial clients in Greater DC.
- Needs analysis: Conduct fact-finding interviews with both talent and clients to evaluate goals, set expectations, and make recommendations regarding employment and staffing needs.
- Client service: Manage full lifecycle recruiting, candidate submission, interview scheduling, and rate/salary negotiation process for an average of 18 open orders concurrently.
- Business development: Negotiate fee agreements for recruiting and placement services. Build client relationships, promoting [MISF] as staffing agency of choice for recruiting solutions. Represent [MISF] at career fairs, networking events, and curriculum advisory boards.
- Professional development: Pursue expertise in employment law as relates to the staffing industry. Attain internal [MISF] certification for entire period of eligibility in addition to the Certified Staffing Professional designation.
You can see that this arrangement of my experience at the MISF would position me for an account management position in a variety of industries, not just staffing. At the same time, you have a good sense of what I was actually doing, and I have connected the dots for you on how it would relate to other types of work. It also demonstrates through the “Professional Development” item, that I am someone who is committed to learning as much as possible about my chosen field- a critical point if I were looking to make a change.
There’s more to say about this format, but for now, just go try it out on your own resume and see what you think.
Tiffany,
Been reading MPoJ for a few months now. Love the post about functional resumes, I hate them myself. I primarily work with entry-level college students, and the employers I work with seem to agree. I like your suggested format for experienced candidates, but for more entry-level folks like the ones I see, I suggest a three- to five-bullet profile at the top of the resume that lists in the strongest terms possible the handful of transferable skills that the candidate brings to the table. I suggest leaving out traits like “responsible” or “hard working” (since no one will claim NOT to be either of those, and since everyone tries to use those traits) and to focus on actual skills. Just wondered what you thought of that for a more entry-level candidate.