Choosing Your Resume Format
A resume is a persuasive 1-page document meant to showcase your most relevant qualities, experiences, and interests for a job. This tailored document should be easy to read and a snapshot of why you’re a great fit for the role. Since recruiters skim resumes for 7.4 seconds on average (source), it’s important to have a clear layout and format. But did you know there are a few different types of resume formats? In this newsletter, we will be highlighting what a chronological, functional, and combination resume looks like and pointers for choosing the best one for you.
Every resume should include a Summary of Qualifications section to frame your resume. This is at least be a one bullet point summary statement that highlights your main interests, skills, and experiences. It’s like an elevator pitch for your resume!
Chronological Resume
The chronological resume is the most commonly used resume format with the bulk of your page dedicated to your work experiences. Using this format, you will list your work history in reverse-chronological order with your most recent work experiences listed at the top with older positions towards the bottom. This makes it easy for recruiters and hiring managers to see your career progression.
Who Should Use a Chronological Resume?
Most people can use a chronological resume if they have had few gaps between jobs and roles. As long as your career history has been relatively consistent and aligns with the job you’re applying for and the bullet points are tailored to the job description, the straightforward-nature of this resume format is a safe bet.
Functional/Skills Resume
Rather than emphasizing work history, this resume format focuses on your skills relevant to the job description. Instead of sub-categories listing your relevant positions, you have sub-categories of relevant skills with bullet points elaborating on experiences and accomplishments related to that skill. Your work history is still listed at the bottom of the resume but with limited content.
Who Should Use a Functional/Skills Resume?
Although this may seem like an attractive resume format for someone making a career change or with an inconsistent work history or huge gaps in their resume, we would not recommend using this resume format. Recruiters and hiring managers tend to dislike this resume format since it takes information out of context and is difficult to read among the stack of chronological and combination resumes.
Combination/Hybrid Resume
Perhaps it’s obvious from the title of this resume format but a combination resume format compromises on the hallmarks of a chronological and combination resume format by highlighting relevant skills and projects as well as including work history. In fact, most of our resume templates on the iSchool Career Services page are based on a combination resume format! What we like about the combination resume is that it includes a relevant/key skills section that can be integrated with your Summary of Qualifications and can include a Projects section that can go above Work Experience.
Who Should Use a Combination/Hybrid Resume?
We recommend a combination resume format for everyone, including those just starting out in their career, anyone making a career change, or with large gaps in their work history. The relevant/key skills section should be tailored to the job description and also include technical skills and tools. This allows you to highlight transferable skills even if your work experiences are not conventionally related.
Snoopy Pic of the Week!
Snoopy would like to share this following quote by Barbara Smith: “Remember, goals are stars to steer by, not sticks with which to beat ourselves.”
Upcoming Events
iSchool
More info and registration via iCareers:
The recording from yesterday’s Adulting 101 Workshop is now up!
- April 29th (today!) Employer Tech Talk: The Transformation of Healthcare and Technology with Edifecs; 12 – 1 PM
- May 5th Alternative Summer Plans: Small Group Coaching – Zoom; 12:30 – 1:30 PM
- May 6th Finding Your Fit Alumni Panel – Zoom; 5 – 6 PM
- May 8th GPSS Grad Career Symposium; 9 AM – 5 PM, Caitlin will be leading a session on Finding a Job in Tech During a Pandemic from 1-2pm
View recordings from past events on the Recorded iCareers Sessions page.
Career & Internship Center
- April 30th Apple Live Q&A (via hallothere.com); 10 – 11 AM
- April 30th AMA Series: Continuing my education during COVID 19 – Should I go to Grad School now, later or never?; 12:00 – 12:45 PM
- May 5th Preparing for the Virtual Job & Internship Fair Workshop; 2:00 – 2:30 PM
- May 13th UW Virtual Job and Internship Fair; 10 AM – 2 PM
Positions for Consideration
Technical Game Design Intern (Remote), Gamebreaking Studios, Handshake
Audience Insights Summer Intern, The New York Times, Handshake
Web Developer Summer Intern, OCBang, Handshake
UX/UI or HCD Mobile App Internship, Tammira, Handshake
AI / Machine Learning Engineer, CLOSTRA, Handshake
Text Mining Student Specialist, Music Library Association, Pacific Northwest Chapter, iCareers ID 10676
Customer Success Engineer, Paymentus, iCareers ID 10677
Non-residential Collection Management Internship, Digital Theological Library, iCareers ID 9379
Post-doctoral Research Fellowships (3 positions), Forrest Research Foundation, iCareers ID 10678
Questions or feedback? Contact us at icareers@uw.edu | iCareers
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