The Chronological
Resume
The Chronological
style of resume is the most widely accepted format for outlining work experience.
Try this type of format first.
Process to
Create a Chronological Resume
Organize jobs
in reverse chronological order, stating:
Dates, beginning
and terminating, in words not numbers (May, not 05). For full-time, on-going
(permanent) positions of at least one year, it is not necessary to include
a reference to the months.
Job Title: (create a
descriptive functional title one if you had none)
Name of Company
or Organization. Do not include supervisor's
name or employer's street address or telephone number. In point form,
talk about what you contributed to or accomplished on the job. Indicate the circumstances and
outcome of any special project your were involved in that had favorable outcomes. Indicate the level of responsibility you were entrusted
with, such as, depositing cash or filling in for management.
Employers also look for evidence of promotion. Begin
each entry with an action verb, listing accomplishments, tasks performed,
skills developed, or, if appropriate, specialties learned. The amount
of specific detail will be determined by the relevance to the job you are
applying for. Use the
present tense of the verb for work continuing as you write your resume
and the past tense for work that has ceased. In less relevant work,
emphasize transferable skills (for an administrative job objective,
use points such as ability to work under pressure/stress, communicative/interpersonal
skills, and attention to detail when describing a waiter/waitress position).
Do not use abbreviations, slang, sarcasm or humor. Prioritize the points when you are describing
your work as they relate to your job objective, not as they related to
your past experience. For jobs you want to include but not give details,
add a sub-section at the end of Work Experience called Other Work Experience
with job titles, or job titles and type of work environment if helpful,
e.g., camp counselor, waiter in fast paced truck stop, stock clerk in automotive
store. If you started/ran your own business, refer to it by its proper
name and your official title. Include accounting, sales, human resources,
and other "jobs" performed by you in the course of running your business.
Modified
Chronological Resume
The only difference
between this type of resume and the Chronological one is the section on
work experience, as it enables you to feature related experience, or to
move to the top of the section those jobs which would ordinarily be listed
after less pertinent ones. Replace the words, Work Experience, with
a descriptor about the type of experience (e.g., Research Experience, Business
Experience). Collect in one section all jobs of similar type and
list them in reverse chronological order. Be sure that the theme
word you use to describe each Experience section is descriptive of aspects
of the job you stated in your Job Objective.
|
