Why Recruiters HATE the Functional Resume Format

Why Recruiters HATE the Functional Resume Format Why Recruiters HATE the Functional Resume Format Recruiters hate the functional resume, a veteran recruiter in the healthcare industry told Jobscan. Its a waste of time.fruchtwein resumes utilize the classic reverse-chronological format. Your name and contact information go at the top, followed immediately by your employment history. Startingwith your current or fruchtwein recent position and walking backwards through time, this format plainly shows recruiters exactly where youve been. It helps them plot and forecast your career trajectory. Its simple, intuitive, and skimmable. The reverse-chronological format is the gold standard for resumes now and for the foreseeable future.But not everyones career follows the same path. There are lane changes, U-turns, and missteps along the way. For some, a linear trip through their past job titles isnt the most effective way to tell their career story. They need to find a different way to communi cate their skills and expertise on their resume.They need a different resume format.What is the Functional Resume Format?Among the alternatives, one of the mostpopular resume formatsis the functional resume. This resume format deemphasizes work history and puts skills and accomplishments front and center. After your name and contact information, you go straight into your most relevant skills and accomplishments. Your work history is listed with minimal detail at the bottom of the resume.Here is functional resume exampleFunctional Resume Template. Click to Enlarge. Download .docxThis format is most attractive to job seekers who are switching industries or trying to move their career in a new direction. If your primary functions at previous jobs arent relevant to the job for which youre applying, the functional resume format allows you to highlight instances in which you were able to showcase transferrable skills.For example, you might have held a couple positions as an Administrative Assistant in which you pitched in with customer service as one of many job duties. Now youre applying for a position as Customer Service Coordinator. With a functional resume, you can shine a light on your customer service skills and results without getting sidetracked by clerical and other unrelated admin responsibilities.Unfortunately, for the same reasons the functional resume is attractive to some job seekers, itcauses suspicion in recruiters.How Recruiters Read a Functional ResumeThe recruiter told us a story from his own job search history, back when he tried using a functional resume to make the jump from sales to the HR industryI actually paid someone to do a functional resume for me. Whenever I would greifhand it to someone who was screening at a job fair, I would watch their eyes, and they would skip right past everything at the top of the resume and go straight to my work history and look at the job titles. I would repeatedly watch them do this. Then I finally got myself into the HR industry where I was screening resumes and I do the exact same thing.Why do recruiters hate this format?Youre taking information out of context, said the recruiter. Its easier to BS your way through to make things sound glamorous. Within the context of where skills and accomplishments took place, it gives me a better idea of whats going on.They hate it because they need to draw their own conclusions. The functional resume format was created to cover up gaps in an applicants experience and recruiters know it. They will skip straight down to the work history to try and figure what youre hiding. Its a dead giveaway.An Alternative to the Functional ResumeI definitely want to see everything laid out in context, said the recruiter.Ive seen plenty of people that try to use a functional resume thats not in that context, and I tell them, Youre just shooting yourself in the foot.That said, recruiters understand that people change careers and cant always count on their work histor y speaking for itself.If youre trying to make that transition, yes, youre going to want to try and list your transferrable skills, said the recruiter. But again, I wouldnt do it so much where youre listing everything at the top above your experience. Instead, the recruiter suggested taking a more blended approach.The Hybrid Resume FormatTheres a name for this. In the space between the functional resume and the reverse-chronological resume is the hybrid resume, also known as the combination resume.Like the functional resume format, the hybrid resume has space at the top of the page for skills and accomplishments. Unlike the functional resume, it leaves the bottom half of the resume for a more traditional approach to the work history, where each position is accompanied by a blurb that outlines responsibilities and accomplishments.Here is a hybrid resume exampleHybrid Resume Template. Click to Enlarge. Download .docxFor job seekers changing careers or industries, the hybrid resume is a safer bet than the functional resume. That said, this versatile format isnt just for applicants with a non-traditional work history. Hybrid resumes seem to be growing in popularity amongapplicants of all backgrounds. Most of Jobscans premium resume templates are hybrids.The dedicated skills sections found on both functional and hybrid resume formats can also be beneficial when it comes to making sure you have the right resume keywords for applicant tracking system searches. Find out whether your resume is optimized for the jobs youre pursuing with one click

Distinction bias Why you make terrible life choices

Distinction bias Why you make terrible life choicesDistinction bias Why you make terrible life choicesThere I was, looking at an enormous wall of television screens. Each one flashed the exact saatkorn scene - a beautiful flower slowly blooming to reveal each petal, pistil, and stamen in exquisite super high definition detail. It was downright sexy. But now it was time to make my choice.Would I buy the $400 television within my budget or would I splurge on the $500 deluxe model that somehow helped me understand plant biology in a new, mora intimate way?Though every cone and rod in my eyeballs begged me to buy the better one, my more sensible instinct kicked in. Your budget is $400, remember? Sighing, I bought the crappy model and braced for a life of media mediocrity.But then, a strange thing happened. When I fired up the new set at home, it looked fine. Better than fine in fact. It looked great I couldnt figure out why I even wanted the pricier model in the first place.Why the chan ge of heart?Among ahostof brainbiases, I fell victim to distinction bias - atendency to over-value the effect of small quantitative differences when comparing options.In the store, I was in comparison mode, evaluating the TVs side by side hypersensitive to the smallest differences. But at home, there was just one TV and no alternatives to compare against. It was glorious in its singularity.Choose for chocolateLets do a little experiment together. I want you to pick between two options.Option 1 Ill give youoneHershey Kiss worth of chocolate if you think of a time in your life when you experienced personal success.Or Option 2 Ill give youthreeHershey Kisses if you think of a time in your life when you experienced personal failure.Which would you choose?In studies, about two-thirds of peopleopt for more chocolate. Clearly, more is better, right? leid always.Despite the fact people chose freely and presumably wanted to maximize their happiness, those who opted to think of a negative me mory for more chocolate were significantly less happy than those who chose a positive memory for less chocolate. And, lest you think the effect might be a result of feeling guilty for eating fattening chocolate, the researchers thought about that too. Yet, they found no significant difference between the two groups when it came to feelings about eating the candies. So what gives?Your brain isnt that smartPsychologistsbelieve we are in two different modes when we compare options versus when we experience them. When making a choice, we are in comparison mode- sensitive to small differences between options, like me choosing a television. But when we live out our decisions, we are in experience mode - there are no other options to compare our experience to.In comparison mode, were pretty good at deciding between qualitative differences. For example, we know that an interesting job is better than a boring one or that being able to walk to work is better than having to suffer driving in r ush hour traffic.When I asked you to pick between Option 1 or 2, you likely could have told me recalling a personal success story would feel better than recalling a failure. So why do people choose Option 2? For more chocolates of course And thats where things get sticky.Humans are not very good at predicting how quantitative differences, those involving numbers, affect happiness. In the experiment, people assumed three Hershey Kisses worth of chocolate would bring them three times the happiness. But it didnt.We make the same mistake in real life all the time. We think a 1,200 square foot home will make us happier than a 1,000 square foot home. We think earning $70,000 a year will make us happier than earning $60,000 a year.We often place higher emphasis on inconsequential quantitative differences and pick an option that wont actually maximize our happiness.How to outsmart your brain1. Dont compare options side by sideIn comparison mode, we end up spending too much time playing spot the difference. This is where we run into trouble and focus too much on inconsequential quantitative differences. To combat this, avoid comparing two options side by side.What can we do instead? Evaluate each choice individually and on their own merit.If you are buying a house, dont compare one with another.Spend timeat each house focusing only on what you like and dislike about that house to form a holistic impression of it. That includes everything from the size of the house, your commute, how close your friends live, its warmth and coziness all the way down to how weird the neighbours are.Now, choose the house that registers the best overall holistic experience.2. Know your must-haves before you lookClever marketers often use distinction bias to trick us into paying more for things we dont actually need and wont make us any happierSo next time, defend yourself by writing down what really mattersbeforeyou shop. Write down your must-have reasons why youre buying the item. Then, on ce those conditions are met youll be free to pick the cheapest option that has your requirements without getting suckered into features you dont really need.3. Optimize for things you cant get used toResearchers believethat we fall victim to distinction bias when we underestimate our tendency to return to a baseline level of happiness over time- this tendency is known ashedonic adaptation. Despite thinking well live happily ever after, a higher income or a bigger house doesnt make us happier for very long.As a rule of thumb, your happiness will adjust back to anything that is stable and certain like your income, the size of your house, or the quality of your TV. These things do not change day to day so you can expect your happiness level to fade.On the other hand, infrequent or uncertain positive events, like quality time with friends or an exciting road trip, occur too sporadically to get used to. Inserting more of these hard-to-adapt-to experiences in your life will create longer lasting happiness.When our species first evolved, picking the ripest fruit on the bush or selecting the right animal from the herd served us well. Today however, the same shortcut that helped us survive can get us into trouble. Instead of optimizing for what will make us happier in the long-term, we play spot the difference regarding attributes that dont matter much. Though savvy marketers can use this bias to sell us stuff that may not make us better off, theres no reason we have to keep falling for their tricks. After all, the trick is in our own heads. By understanding our cognitive quirks, like distinction bias, we can outsmart our own brains.Nir Eyal is the author ofHooked How to Build Habit-Forming Products. For more insights on using psychology to change customer behavior, join Nirs free newsletter and receive a free workbookhere.This column, which first appeared at Nir and Far, is part of a series on cognitive bias co-authored with and illustrated byLakshmi Mani.

The Resume is in the Job Details

The Resume is in the Job DetailsThe Resume is in the Job DetailsAerospace manager Gary Hartley of Washington state, had a resume that needed to balance too much information and not enough detail.Details can make or break you on a resume. Too many and your resume is likely to land in the recycle bin. Too few and your resume may not say enough to sell you.How do you balance details to reach the top of an interview list? Talk about the how as in how you did your job and how you got where you were.Take Gary Hartley, a Washington-state quality-assurance executive for the aerospace industry, who hadnt had his resume updated in about 10 years. Gary was recently a victim of an industry downsize.In a profession where quantifiable metrics rule, Garys dense, five-and-a-half-page resume was full of pertinent info but also a huge visual turnoff.Gary is a very successful aerospace professional with over 20 years of experience who leads large quality-assurance teams in aircraft manufacturing and sa ves companies tons of money, said Kim Mohiuddin, a certified professional resume writer who works with Ladders. However, Garys extremely quantifiable achievements were visually muted by the sheer volume of information on the page. There was little guidance as to what it all meant.In a word, Garys resume was oversaturated.Via the questionnaire and interview process, I learned that this guy had improved quality everywhere he worked, and he made his teams better. I got him to explain how he did these things, Mohiuddin said. Then I took that how and focused on those improvements to emphasize this combination of management skill and metrics. I then made in to a kind of story that said, This is what Gary can do for you.I knew things had changed with resumes over 10 years since I had done a lot of hiring building these quality-assurance teams, Hartley said.Fresh, editorial eyesIn most resumes, you notice these patterns of people depicting what they did, but most of the time what is missing is how they did it or how they arrived at a position, Mohiuddin said. In Garys case, during the interview process I learned that he was specifically recruited for one of his last jobs because of his expertise in fixing projects that had gone off course. He was considered the best person in the industry for that kind of job. Finding that small detail is the kind of thing you cant learn unless you go through some sort of evaluation process.Mohiuddin likens it to the relationships writers and editors have when working on a writing project. Sometimes a resume requires a fresh set of professional eyes - eyes that can help you find a new perspective. In Garys case, the process made the resume discover a fresh strength and focus it hadnt had before.You want to make it very easy for the resume reader to imagine exactly what youd be offering their company, Mohiuddin said. Sometimes it is hard for people to be objective about themselves and what would be valuable to those on the other end r eading your resume - especially for someone in a metrics-driven industry. How do you know which metrics to use and promote?Thats where the fresh set of eyes comes in.Upon learning Hartley had an interview in less than a week, Mohiuddin jumped on his resume, got the questionnaire and interview accomplished within a few days, and had the new resume to Hartley the day of his interview.It is superb, Hartley said. Kim did an amazing job. Ive had five interviews since the first week in February and a couple offers, but they were further away than I was willing to relocate. So the things are progressing well. I know this resume is working.