Leave hiring managers with a great impression of you by choosing the ideal resume format for your experience. This guide explains the pros and cons of each format along and provides access to an online resume builder, free examples and downloadable templates.
While there are no set rules about which format to use, you should be aware of these established guidelines to help make an informed decision.
You’ll decide which format is best for your particular situation. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of each design, along with general best-writing practices.
The chronological, or reverse-chronological, resume is the most familiar format and the default layout that people use when writing resume advice, including our writing guide. This resume relies on the following structure:
Your work history is the first detailed section and, true to name, presents your experience in chronological order. Your current or most recent position is listed first, followed by the role immediately prior, and so forth. Each job entry clearly shows both the title and length of time you held at each role.
Keep in mind that you need to determine how far back your work history will go. We recommend that you include your employment history from the past 10 years, or go back the number of years required to list job experiences that relate to the job you’re currently seeking.
This format’s role is to quickly relate your experience to the job opening. What constitutes a relevant work history varies significantly by industry and employer, particularly for highly competitive roles. You need to marry your resume with the requirements listed in each new job advertisement.
Most job seekers using this format tend to provide the most detail on their three most recent positions while including only career-defining accomplishments and brief summaries for previous jobs.
You can learn more about this format in our dedicated chronological format guide, but our succinct advice is to use this format if you have more than 10 years of steady employment that reflects a clear upward career progression, increased responsibilities and demonstrable skills development. That means that your resume timeline can’t include any work gaps longer than a few weeks, frequent job shifts or any employment that lasted less than a year.
The chronological resume is an especially strong format if your work history includes highly-recognized companies — brand recognition adds clout to your professional experience.
The chronological resume is not recommended for entry-level job seekers, students or new entrants to the workforce because it draws attention to your relative lack of work experience. A combination resume is a better choice for you, since that format has a dedicated section for your work experiences but prioritizes your skills section.
It’s also a poor choice if you’re reentering the workforce after a long absence. Consider the functional or combination formats below, as they can help you showcase skills and technical knowledge over conventional work experiences.
Our designated chronological resume format guide offers multiple resume templates and step-by-step advice for creating your chronological resume. You’ll also find expert advice on what recruiters look for on a resume, free templates and resume-building tools for creating a compelling chronological document.
You can also build your own chronological resume by using our online Resume Builder. You’ll find further advice formatting your resume further down this page.
The functional resume focuses directly on relevant skills and career achievements, regardless of when they were gained. This format usually begins with an overview of the job seekers’ skills and most relevant work experiences, while listing the work history at the end of the resume. This resume relies on the following structure:
Unlike the other two formats, a functional resume captures your achievements, responsibilities and time spent at each job through your skills. It’s often called a “skills-based resume.” You’ll list skills in order of priority according to how valuable they are to the open position or potential employer.
Because the functional resume focuses directly on skills relevant to a specific job, this format is handy if you need to emphasize to recruiters and hiring managers your technical skills and practical experience, or if you have a very short or non-existent work history.
But this resume format is also less common than the chronological resume and should be used with caution. Recruiters may review this resume with the assumption that you’re trying to exclude unfavorable details of your employment history (e.g., job hopping, performance-based termination, being a “late bloomer”).
Choose this layout if you experienced frequent job changes or have significant gaps in your employment. It’s also an excellent choice if you’re an entry-level job seeker, have three-to-five years of experience, are a seasoned professional with over 10 years of experience but want to change careers, or if you have valuable transferable skills but your job history doesn’t clearly relate to your new job.
Do not use the functional resume format if you are applying to roles in conservative industries or firms, like banking, finance or law. These employers often have standard recruitment procedures that prefer the chronological template — candidates are expected to include specific information on their resumes in the standard chronological layout.
You should also use a different layout if you’re applying for a managerial role, or are trying to get promoted and need to demonstrate career growth.
Skills are what matter in the workplace, not the path you took to acquire them. Use this resume if you’re looking for a job that requires a lot of technical skills, such as a job in the S.T.E.A.M. field. As long as you give detailed descriptions of your past training and experience, your functional resume will perform well.
You’ll find a comprehensive step-by-step guide to creating a functional resume that showcases your skills. You’ll also find 60 downloadable samples, our free templates and resume-building tools that will put your skills at the center of the conversation with your next employer.
This layout brings together the strengths of both the chronological and functional resumes. Also called the hybrid format, equal weight is given to your previous work responsibilities and skills. It highlights your curated set of skills and career accomplishments before it presents your prior employment in order of recency, much like a chronological layout.
Use the combination resume if you’re looking for a medium- to senior-level role and have over three years of work history, extensive skills and achievements that tell your distinguished career story. Because this format is so comprehensive and detailed, it’s also the most difficult of the three resumes to write.
Combination resumes are often longer than functional or chronological resumes. Keep your version focused, forceful and concise. Avoid redundant information, irrelevant details or meandering narrative. You'll find additional information on our in-depth combination guide.
Use this format if you’re an entry-level employee with significant internship or entry-level experience, or have over ten years of work experience with powerful skills and accomplishments. It will benefit you if you’re looking for a mid- to senior-level role or a new position that requires highly specialized skills.
Don’t use the combination resume format if your career history seems incomplete, lacks the accomplishments of your senior-level peers, or you have substantial gaps between jobs. Career changes, job hopping and absences from the workforce are very noticeable in this format and come across as glaring in the work history section of a combination resume.
You are at the top of your career game — your resume needs to shine as you do. Here you’ll find a complete, comprehensive guide to crafting a highly refined combination resume. More than 100 downloadable templates, a powerful Resume Builder, and tips from the pros are available to help you create a resume of distinction.
Once you decide which resume format is ideal for your job search, we can help you create your resume. Each of our in-depth format guides above feature free downloadable templates that you can use to start your resume.
We also offer an online Resume Builder that can help you design your own resume in the format of your choice. Our online tool uses a default combination format, but we engineered it so that you can easily move each resume section and add additional resume sections to meet your needs. We’ll explain how to edit your resume into your chosen format below, but first, we’d like to explain how our Builder generates your resume.
You’ll be asked to fill in information about your contact information, work history, education, skills and summary statement, and prompted to include any additional sections like your accomplishments, professional websites or certifications. Once you fill out that information, you’ll be shown a page with your new auto-formatted design in the combination format. From there, you can make it your own by following these instructions. Below, we show you how to modify this combination format for chronological and functional resumes.
Once your information is input and the builder auto-generates your template, you can hover your mouse cursor over each section to edit it. As you hover over the section, you’ll see a thin border surrounding the section, a little trash can symbol on your left-hand side, and a little compass symbol on your right-hand side. Move the mouse cursor over the compass signal in order to move your section up or down on the page.
You’ll want to hover over the “Skills" section and move it until it sits under your “Work History” section. That's the only change you'll need to make in order to build a completed chronological resume in our online builder.
We advise that you use this finalized template as a starting document for your job search. You’ll still want to modify each section to address the unique need of each new job to which you apply. For example, if a job post requires that you have experience working with teams larger than six people, you’ll want to make sure that you mention this in your resume before you submit your resume for that particular job.
To create a functional format using our Resume Builder, create two additional skills sections named Summary of Qualifications and “Relevant Skills,” and remove dates and job responsibilities from your Work History. We’ll give you step-by-step advice below.
To rename an existing Skills section, hover your mouse cursor over the section. You’ll see a “RENAME” prompt next to the section title. Click on the prompt and you’ll bring up a text box. Update the name to General Skills and hit ”Enter” to save.
You can create your new Summary of Qualifications and Relevant Skills sections by looking at the left-hand menu next to your resume. Under your resume’s existing sections, you’ll see an option to “Add a Section.” Click that option, select the “Add Your Own,” option in the prompt window, and label it with the relevant title.
Your new Summary of Qualifications will be a three-to-four sentence bulleted list. Each sentence will quickly summarize a different skill that you’ve acquired through school, certification, training or on-the-job learning. For example, an orthodontist might write:
Your new Relevant Skills section must prominently feature three-to-six skills with additional information about your knowledge and achievements under each skill. For example, an orthodontist might write the following for one of three-to-six skills.
Your final action will include a significant trim of your work history. Your Summary of Qualifications and Relevant Skills sections serve the purpose of a traditional Work History, so you can remove all information save for your past job title and employer name.
Our builder uses the combination resume as our default format. Once you fill-in your information, your resume is all set for you. As your resume advisors, we still advise that you edit your resume before you submit it to every new job application.
Each new job post that you apply to has unique requirements — you’ll want to ensure that your resume reflects roles and responsibilities that the advertisement requires before you submit it. This attention to detail will help increase your odds for an interview and job offer.
There are three standard resume formats, but you can have a little fun with your presentation once you’ve decided which layout best-suits your employment needs. The following pages feature unique resume templates that experiment with design to further help you stand out from fellow job seekers.
Basic
Modern
Creative
The chronological resume is the best resume format for you if you’re a seasoned worker with more than 10 years of experience. This format prioritizes your work history and clearly outlines your career growth through each job title’s responsibilities and accomplishments.
The combination resume is the best resume format if you’re an entry-level worker. This format prioritizes your skills, but dedicates space to clearly outline your past jobs and demonstrate the growth of your responsibilities and experience.
Most employers prefer the chronological resume format because it is the most popular and familiar layout. The combination resume is a good second choice, since it follows a similar layout but reorganizes the location of your skills and work history sections. The functional resume is the riskiest choice because recruiters can’t see definite dates of employment.
The chronological resume works best for longer resumes, as it’s designed to highlight more than 10 years of experience. Some general resume rules to follow is that you should dedicate one page for every 10 years of experience and that resume should never go over two pages unless you're applying to an executive or academic position.
Most ATS programs scan resumes for labeled summary statements, work history, skills, and education sections. Chronological and combination resumes are best for ATS programs because they feature those named sections.
The hybrid resume format is an alternate name for the combination resume. This format is called this because it is designed to equally highlight both your skills and work history and combines the best features of the chronological and functional resumes.
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