When it comes to the resume, one of the questions that raises the most interest is whether to write a chronological resume or a functional one? It is actually something young job seekers usually struggle with and that represents a great source of stress when the time comes for them to write their resume for the first time. How do we come to decide which option is the best among those two? Find out more in the following.
Good things about a chronological resume…
First of all, it is difficult to decide on which one offers more advantages. A chronological resume, as its name suggests, is good for presenting the different work history of the candidate in a chronological order. It is important to know that when you write a chronological resume, you must present it, starting with the most recent job down to the earliest. You do that because the recruiter is more interested in your most recent experience. Also, If your chronological resume attracts a lot of recruiters it is because it has the ability of presenting the whole work history of a person with great clarity. This type of resume is very useful when you want to show to the recruiter that in terms of unjustified lapses in employment, short time in companies etc you have nothing to hide. Chronological resumes are the best choices when you want to put your career path forward.
The good things about a functional resume…
From the way things look, it appears as a chronological resume is more popular than a functional one, however functional resume do offer some advantages in many levels. In many cases actually It would be better to use it. Contrary to the chronological resume, a functional resume is not focused on the work history of the candidate. It would be more than needed to bring some changes to the “professional experience” section, by not taking the dates in consideration but rather focus on the skills of the candidate. The writing process of that type of resume is not easy to do because you would need to have a clear vision of your career path, to the specific skills that have been put in use for the specific jobs, and your career plan. It would be recommended to use it in two possible situations. If the candidate has too much of a long and vast professional experience to put them all on a chronological resume. If the candidate has done multiple temporary jobs, it would also be wise to have a functional resume because going through each and every job could end up being exhausting. Also, using a functional resume could be suggested for people who don’t want to expose some of the work experiences that they find negative whether it is true or not: lapses in employment, too many changes of companies, having jobs that are less glorious than the ones before at one point of their career, etc. One should know however that a functional resume also has a drawback. Indeed, it could raise suspicions because the recruiter could end up wondering what the candidate really wanted to hide. For that reason, most recruiters like the chronological resume better.