Combination Resume

Determine if a combination resume is right for you. A combination resume is best for those who have specific skills, and wish to highlight how they were acquired. If you’ve developed a special skill set from a wide variety of activities, and if you have specific skills and an evolving work history where you acquired them, a combination resume is likely the best style of resume for you.

1. Decide in what combination you will list your education, work history, and other achievements. Remember, your resume is an advertisement for you, so your best qualities should be listed first. For example, if you have a graduate degree, you may want to list your education first, or if you have won a prominent award in your field, you may chose to list your skills, awards, and achievements first. On the other hand, if your most recent role is an impressive achievement, make sure you start with that.

2. List your employment history. This can be done in one of two ways:

o If your work history includes positions in more than one field, you should list your jobs under functional sub-headings, which categorize the skills you used at each particular one (e.g., “Financial Experience,” “Customer Service Experience,” “Research Experience,” etc.). When listing your employment history in this manner, each sub-heading should contain a listing of the positions you’ve held that relate to those functional areas. The listing should include the name and location of the employer, a description of your duties and responsibilities, the dates you were employed, and any accomplishments or achievements at that particular job.

o If you can demonstrate that your evolving work history highlights the key skills you want to promote, you may want to list your work history in reverse chronological order, without including any sub-headings. Instead of the subheadings, you could strategically select the way you word your descriptions of your roles and responsibilities to highlight how you honed those skills.

3. Provide information about your education. The details you include about your education will be the same as the details you’d include in other resume styles; the difference is in where you present the information on the resume. For each college, university, or trade school you have attended, list the name and location of the institution, the degree or certificate you received, and the years you attended. If your grade point average (“GPA”) was 3.5 or higher, you may want to list it as well.

4. Provide information on your skills, awards, and achievements. This can be blocked into one section, or they can be distributed within the sub-headings of your resume that highlight specific skills.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 865