FUNCTIONAL RESUME GUIDELINES WITH EXAMPLES & TEMPLATE

One of the most popular misbelieves about a functional cv is that its main goal is to hide any gaps in work experience. However, even though they mask those gaps, it is not the primary goal of such a resume.

On the contrary, it allows potential employees to send a customized resume, showing skills that are important for a particular vacancy. In today’s article, we will tell you how to create a powerful writing resume, will show you what sections it should include and will also provide examples of a cv for additional clarity. Stay with us and get the best tips absolutely for free!

What is a functional resume?

Let us start with a definition. A functional resume is a resume, which follows a format based on your skills. Along with the chronological and combination resume, functional is one of the most popular in the world.

However, they possess a few distinguishing features. They include:

• Introduction and Skills sections are deeper and more detailed;
• Work experience is not in the focus.

Parts of a resume are the same but the content and its quality are rather different. This means that you will emphasize your strengths and skills, not your work experience.

Even though most job seekers use a reverse chronological format, which shows their work history, such a format may not be suitable for everyone. For many employees, a functional resume is the one, which helps them to find a job of their dreams!

Are you ready to become an owner of a flawless resume that would emphasize your strongest sides and mask any working gaps? Then continue reading!

How to Write A Functional Resume?

Current resume trends greatly influence the appearance and content of a CV. Let us introduce you to the freshest and the most relevant sections of a functional resume with their detailed description!

• Contact information

Adding contact details is the simplest part of resume writing. All you need is to indicate your name, email, phone number, address and your LinkedIn account (if you don’t have one, we strongly recommend you creating it).

After providing these details, you can move on to the qualifications section. If you have a website that may be relevant for the vacancy, don’t forget to include it. When it comes to formatting, don’t forget to make your name visible by choosing the 20-24 pt font size.  If you doubt, you don’t need to include the address to your contact details section or stick only to the town and country you live in.

Summary of qualifications

The summary of qualifications is a great chance to start a resume for those, who have serious unemployment gaps or don’t have enough experience records. This section allows you to highlight important qualities and skills in the professional field omitting gaps and lack of experience.

Don’t forget that one of the most common reasons for using a functional resume is to concentrate on your skills and to show that you are qualified enough despite lack of experience or if you are switching industries.

An additional benefit of this section is that it allows job seekers to write about their best features and skills right on top of the resume, leaving the educational and work history below. At the end of the article, we have provided an example of a functional resume. Check it out and you’ll see yourself how beneficial it is!

In the Summary of Qualifications section, you need to include around five examples of relevant achievements. This means that they must concern the area or the job you are willing to take. Thus, you will impress the hiring manager and catch his or her attention (remember that usually, they spend only a few seconds to decide whether a resume is worth attention or not, so the higher your achievement section is located, the better your chances of being hired are).

• Skills

In a functional resume, the skills section is more important than the work history one. If you get familiar with various examples of functional CVS, you will see that it looks almost the same as the work experience section of a traditional (reverse chronological) resume. The only difference is that the candidate, who is sticking to a functional format, has unemployment gaps or decided to choose another career.

The best way to create this section is to start with the three most relevant skills for the vacancy you are applying to. Every skill should additionally include three or four bullet points that back your abilities and provide evidence.

You should follow the universal law no matter what resume format you choose: make your skills quantitative. This means that you need to write about the profits you helped your company to earn, about the number of employees you educated and the number of successful projects you have finished.

Adding at least one quantified point to every skill will surely grab and hold the attention of the manager.

• Work experience

Resume experience is surely not the strongest part of a functional resume. However, there are still a few tips that may help you to improve the situation and to use unemployment periods in your favor.

The first one is to label those gaps. There are many reasons why people have been unemployed for a long time – they were bringing up children, took care of a sick relative, studied independently or were in a college full-time. You can use these reasons to label your unemployment period. For example:

• Personal travel;
• Full-time student;
• Full-time mother;
• Home management and so on.

Even if you took some time to relax and not to do a thing, it is better to leave such reasons aside. Make sure you indicate what you did during those unemployment periods. The only exception is missing work for medical reasons (like rehab) or due to the recession. These two reasons may label you as a ‘high risk’ employee.

The second tip is really simple: avoid including months. This means that you should simply state your working experience in years, so if there was a several-months gap in the middle of the year it still seems that you have been working all the time.

It is quite an acceptable way of making your resume better. If asked, you can explain everything later on a personal interview.

• Education

The education section of a functional resume is not that important, so it is enough to include basic information. The only exception is education, which is directly related to the field you are applying for.

All you need is to indicate the name of the school or university, city, and state, your degree, date of graduation and GPA.

• Awards

Even though Awards is the last section in the CV structure it is a great chance to impress the hiring manager once again and to state that you are a perfect candidate. It shows that you managed to stand out among your colleagues, which is a great way to make your resume also stand out!

When Should You Write a Functional (skills) Résumé?

Many job seekers wonder what resume format would be the best for them. If you are reading this article, you probably already know that a functional format is for you. Here are a few reasons to motivate you to use this type of resume:

• You have quite a long unemployment gap. In such a case a traditional chronological resume is not an option, because the hiring manager will ask too many questions about that period;
• You are switching fields. This means that you don’t have experience in a new industry and will need to show hiring managers why they should hire you;
• You want to emphasize your functional skills in resume. For example, you have outstanding job-related skills that the hiring manager should necessarily see.

Once you have more work history and experience, you can switch between formats considering a particular company or industry that you are willing to enter.

Functional Resume Example

It is better to see once with your own eyes than to read tens of various guidelines. That is why we are happy to provide you with resume layout examples. All of them are categorized, so you can choose the one that reflects your skills and field most perfectly.

You can download various skill based resume templates and alter them based on your needs. They are completely free and go in a text version!

Functional Resume Template

Contact information

Email:

Phone:

Address:

Linkedin:

Summary of qualifications:

• First-class salesman;
• Friendly and charismatic;
• Experienced working with various operating systems;
• Working knowledge of cocktails, beers, and wines;
• Speak French and Italian.

Relevant skills (describe them in every subcategory):

• Salesmanship;
• Technical;
• Interpersonal.

Work history:

Education:

Awards:

As you see from our free functional resume template it is quite simple to create a formatting resume. All you need is to fill in our sample with your information, choose a vacancy and hit the ‘send’ button. Good luck!