Resume Writing

The Functional Resume

A less popular resume format among recruiters and hiring staff, the functional resume highlights your skills without revealing the dates associated with your job history. The functional resume minimizes specific job titles and eliminates dates of employment, while emphasizing your abilities and skills by placing them in functional skill categories.

The functional resume works well if you:

• Have worked many different jobs or possess very diverse skills
• Have skills that relate to the position, but not a lot of previous work experience in the field
• Have gaps in employment history, are a recent graduate, or are changing careers
• Are a mature worker who wants to de-emphasize your age

Click on the buttons in the interactive to learn more about the Functional resume format. Visit the Resume Gallery to see a full view of the experienced paralegal sample resume used in this interactive.

Many hiring managers dislike the functional resume, because they can't use it to gauge your reliability, longevity, or how recently you used certain skills. For example, someone who created sales brochures 20 years ago may not be familiar with the software technologies used to produce a sales brochure today.