What Employers Really Think About Functional Resumes

What Employers Really Think About Functional ResumesWhat Employers Really Think About Functional ResumesDont think you can hide anything HR veterans know all the tricks for cloaking employment gaps or skimpy experience.Once upon a time, resume writers had a fallback format to deal with career-changers, resumes light on experience or clients with gaps in their employment histories the functional resume. This schriftart of resume format plays up an applicants experience and skills instead of showing a chronological work history.Theres one problem with this approach Employers detest it. For the most part, when they binnensee a functional resume, they assume the job seekers got something to hide. Some of the things you hear them say about functional resumes A lot of buzzwords and fluff. Utterly unsuitable for my purposes. A total waste.They were happy to oblige Ladders with details on why this type of resume bothers them. Read on for this behind-the-scenes look at what employers think o f functional resumes, along with their suggested alternatives for how to handle a bumpy career road.Dialogue-ish prose doesnt hide lack of experienceAdam Caller owns and runs Tutors International, a company that recruits specialist educators. His job assignments are challenging to fill, he said, so in order to get the right candidates, he plows through a whole lot of resumes.Caller said he finds functional resumes utterly unsuitable for my purposes. Such resumes are so prose-heavy and information-sparse, he said, they actually disengage and distract the reader, giving the impression that the job seeker is trying to cover up limited job experience.I understand that covering a resume or CV in prose takes up space and gives the impression that more has been done than may have been done by the applicant, but I prefer to see resumes and CVs that are accurate and detailed, and where descriptive prose is minimized, he said.Caller said its far more important that the writer is consistent in terms of layout and style, that she has chosen appropriately professional fonts and borders, and that she delineates header text by position and purpose.You cant hide length of tenureFor his part, Bruce Hurwitz, president and CEO of Hurwitz Strategic Staffing, called functional resumes a total waste.I, and every employer/client I have worked with, reject them out of hand, he said. The reason is always the same, Hurwitz said Employers and recruiters have to know how long a candidate stayed with former employers.Experience is his teacher in this regard Hurwitz said every time hes received a functional resume and then decided contact the candidate, theyve refused to send a chronological listing of positions. They are hiding something, he said. So, in a way, a functional resume is very good it tells the recipient that the candidate should not be considered.Functional resumes dont tell employers enoughJillian Zavitz, programs manager for the English-language training company TalktoCanad a.com, said functional resumes dont tell her what a job candidate can actually do. They tell me what you have experience with, she said. For example I worked in telemarketing for one day once. Wrote it on my functional resume I have experience in telemarketing. Yes, its not technically a lie, because I do have experience in it. But not much - and not enough to put on a resume.A better way to deal with bumpy work historiesRather than having to plow through functional resumes to fill his international tutor openings, Tutors Internationals Caller would rather see a clear record of key academic achievements a list of previous employment (either paid or voluntary) and a summary of honors, interests and languages. He also likes to see GPAs, SAT/ACT results and the like. He doesnt mind a resume being detailed he just doesnt want to see it puffed out with prose.As far as how to treat career gaps or bumpy work histories, Caller prefers that dialogue-prose passages addressing such things go into a detailed application letter that accompanies the resume.Zavitz also prefers resumes that are clear, short and dont include the kitchen sink, she said. It is easy to spot which resumes add the fluff and which ones are real.