Guide to the Resume

The purpose of your application, which includes both a cover letter and resume, is to highlight your skills and accomplishments in an unambiguous and concise manner that grabs the reader’s attention quickly and enables them to clearly see the connection between their needs and your abilities. Formatting your Resume Functional (thematic) resumes focus on accomplishments rather than dates. A functional resume does not often sit well with recruiters. They find this type of resume hard to follow and it raises red flags about gaps in employment. There is a time and place for a functional resume, but we suggest you avoid this style at this point in your career. Skills resumes focus on skills rather than where you have worked. Our opinion is that this approach presents the same problems as when using the functional style. You could list all the great skills you’ve developed but employers will find it hard to see how the skills fit with a particular job you had and how much time you worked in that position. We suggest you do not use this method at this point in your career. Imaginative / Creative resume is more like a mini-portfolio of creative work. This style is very risky for general applications. However, if you are in a “creative field ” like art, graphic design, architecture it MAY be acceptable. Much depends on the employer’s style. This is not the most appropriate style for most psycholog