When creating your resume, the first thing you have to decide is which format you are going to use. Chronological and functional are the most commonly used formats for resume writing. The functional resume is used to highlight skills rather than work experience. This approach is useful for potential employees switching careers, with gaps in their work history, or those who will look overqualified if they present a chronological resume. There are many reasons why a functional resume helps these kinds of candidates, but the most important one is this: a functional resume highlights skill sets that are relevant to the job you are applying for. Even if your job history isn’t relevant to the job you are applying for, your skills should be. So, highlight them!
In a functional resume, the most important section is the Work Experience section. It is here that you list all of your relevant skills. List the ones that are most relevant to the job at the top, where they are most easily seen. For example, if you are applying to a job in sales and you used to work as a telemarketer, you’d have some useful skills to bring to the table. One of them would be customer service. So, you’d list customer service as a skill and then write down examples of where you learned and practiced that skill. For example, you’d write on your resume:
Customer service
-placed over 100 sales calls per day at Telemarketing Inc.
-handled customer complaint tickets at Marketing Company
-received positive customer reviews at TeleCo.
Of course, make sure that you list specific examples of your skills and mention the companies or volunteer organizations where you used them.
You may also want to list an objective before the Work Experience section. Education is another relevant section to put on a functional resume. However, you won’t have a separate section for Activities or Skills, since these should be included in your Work Experience section.
Keep in mind that you can title the Work Experience section any way you’d like. You may want to call it Relevant Skills, for example. However, make sure that your section titles are clear. Also, since your skills are the most important part of the functional resume, you may want them at the top. List only your objective before it; include your education afterwards.
For example functional resumes, please see the following links:
http://www.resume-resource.com/exfunctional.html
http://jobsearch.about.com/library/samples/blresumefunctional.htm
