When summarizing your life-experience to attract a new career-path, one of the critical decisions you have to make is how to present that information in a Resume. Should you focus on your accomplishments and specific triumphs, or should you show the year-by-year progression from one job to the next, filling in all the blanks along the way?

The first option, the Functional Resume, aims to present a generalized summary of your work-history. Hiring Authorities tend to frown on this format, since it kicks their "bee-ess" detectors into high gear: they instantly suspect you're hiding something from your checkered past. (Since this is often the purpose of a Functional Resume, they could be right!)

The second choice is the Chronological Resume, which lists every former employment situation you've had, in an unbroken timeline of your working-life. The problem here is, the reader typically may not grasp the progression in skills and talents you may have developed with each succeeding job/employer, due to the regimented structure of the piece.

A far better method is a combination of the two, first highlighting some significant accomplishments and skills you have developed over those years, then closing the Resume with a brief summary of the actual what/when/where of your professional experience.

This is the approach we take at My Hiring Authority, presenting your credentials in both contexts. The Functional section allows you space to present broad-based skills, talents and accomplishments, perhaps developed across many years and several employers. You may even customize those to the specific needs of the targeted position.

The Chronological section, later on in the Resume, provides the foundation and backbone, supporting the claims made in the Functional setting. Several samples using this approach may be found at:

http://www.myhiringauthority.com/content/resume-writing-samples

By taking this two-pronged perspective on your Resume, you present the best of both worlds to your prospective employer, and avoid both skepticism and boredom from the Hiring Authority.

Chuck Cochran
Founder, www.MyHiringAuthority.com