Resume and Interview Tips
Searching for a job is never easy, but having the best resume that represents who you are isn't difficult to create if you know how it should be organized. For decades, the traditional "chronological" resume has been used where you list your last five or so jobs and a few bullet points of what you did in each job. But what happens when you have a gap in your employment history? Or how do you correctly describe if you had two jobs during the same time period? What if you have very few things to say about one of your former positions and a lot to say about another one. Will it appear like you didn't care about working at the one job with a few bullet points vs. the other with more information? What if you don't have a lot of job experience? What goes on the resume then? Lots of questions, but there is a solution!
The "Combination Resume Format" (or sometimes known as the "hybrid" or "chrono-functional" style) allows you showcase your skills and abilities first and then lists your employment history on a second page. (Yes second pages are fine for a resume!) We've written hundreds of these type of resumes and our clients have been getting incredible responses with them. The layout is simple, powerful, and effective. Here is the basic layout for the combination resume format:
1. Header information - Name, Address, Phone, Email)
2. Summary of Qualifications - This is a three-line paragraph where you showcase your skills and experience as a brief summary prior to starting the rest of your resume. It works much better than an outdated resume objective.
3. Professional Experience - Here is where you let your future boss know why you are going be the best decision he/she's ever made! Pick three of your best general skills categories (i.e. marketing, sales, communication, management, or you can be more specific). Under each heading you list at least five key bullet points of what you have done in any of your positions that relate to the category. For example, under "Sales" you could have a bullet point that says, "Effectively increased customer base by 25% over a two-year period." Remember to use great "action" words with your bullet points (i.e. facilitated training, aggressively grew sales, effectively communicated...)
4. Employment History - Here is where you list all of your employment beginning with the most current and going backwards from there.
5. Education - List your high school and college information here as well as any training or certificates you have earned.
That's the basic outline of a "Combination Format" resume. The beauty of it is that it does two things for your potential boss:
1. It focuses on you and what you can do for your new company FIRST, rather than where you have worked in the past.
2. It visually presents you as a person of action, ability and competence when an employer first sees all of the skills and experience you have and then can review where you have worked along the way.
Again, I have written hundreds of these resumes and my clients have had great success in getting the interviews and jobs that they have applied for. It's great to see someone's resume represent all the experience and hard work they have put into their careers and not just the names of the places that they have worked at.
So give your resume a new look and put the focus where it should be... on YOU.
If you would like to see a step-by-step process on how to create a combination format resume as well as a free resume template and resume samples, visit the link below:
