Functional Resume Format 2023

Functional resume format 2023: Poses

• It would help you to highlight the strongest skills you have and show your potential employer your specialization. If you feel that you have enough skills, but your career path is not impressive, a functional resume is the best choice for you.
• Another good thing is that you don’t need to include any irrelevant experience in your resume. The only thing the hiring manager needs is – your block with skills.

Functional resume format 2023: Cons

• If your career path was great and you have impressive achievements in a specific area, it would be hard to show in this resume format.
• Long-term employment in one company? Try to choose a chronological resume format.
• This format does not reflect your employment dates in the positions you have been in. So, hiring managers could think that you are trying to hide something from them.
• It’s hard to understand only by skills how well you are in other areas.

What blocks are better to include in functional resume 2023

• Personal/Contact information
• Achievements block
• Skills block
• Experience block
• Education
• References if needed

Before you are going to pick a resume template, you should remember the next: your resume is a marketing document, and you need to reach only one goal – to be invited for an interview and get employed. Be careful and pay attention to details, when you choose your resume format.

Optimized Functional Resume Template 2023

A functional resume format could be a tricky option for some candidates, but for most candidates in some situations – that’s the best option. Depending on your experience, career path and set of skills, this type of resume format could be a good option for you as well, as another resume 2023 format. A completely different approach from the chronological template, where you need to highlight your career path and main achievements. This type of resume should focus a reader on your skills. Both soft and hard skills. Even if you have some troubles in your career path, with huge employment gaps or you decided to change areas once and for all.

Functional Resume vs. Chronological Resume

It’s one of the most discussed questions among tons of job seekers. A functional resume would miss most of the required attributes, which you could find in chronological format. A chronological resume requires you to focus on the experience. For each job you have held, you need to provide detailed information including job title, description, company name, etc. Each section must be placed in reverse-chronological order.

What does it mean for you? Full transparency. Even if you’d like to hide some information from a hiring manager, you simply can’t do that, because a resume structure requires you to follow it according to well-known and accepted standards.

Unlike the chronological resume format, a functional resume could bring you much more freedom. Using this type of resume, you don’t need to concentrate readers’ attention on work history. Skills – that’s what are they looking for in a resume. The best practice is to divide skills into two clear groups: hard skills and soft skills.

Skills combined with projects you have managed without strict tight to dates is the best way on how chronological resume structure could be. Even if you have some gaps in your work experience, nobody would know it.

The core of the functional resume format

As we have already mentioned above, you should place the skills section above details to consider your career path. This is the core idea, which makes a functional resume template different from the other resume formats. If you’d like to strengthen a resume, you can do that including some achievements or awards.  Now let’s deep into the functional resume structure below.

The functional resume structure consists of some sections:

• • Personal data

• • Resume summary

• • Skills section

• • Professional experience | projects

• • Education section

Where to begin functional resume

Before you start reading the text below, we hope you have already made a decision on what type of resume format you are going to use, because next, we’re going to cover events considering the functional resume 2023 format.

Start brainstorming. Take a piece of paper and a pencil. Start writing a list of skills, both hard and soft, which you possess. Once you finished with that, move to the next part of this process.

Clustering. Divide soft skills from hard skills. Create two different lists, one with soft skills, and the other with hard. This exercise would help you when you would use functional resume examples 2023 or use a resume builder to craft a brand new functional resume.

Bind events/projects with skills. Once you finished with the previous step and skills are already clustered into two groups, the next step is to bind skills to projects. The main goal here is to show the hiring manager your growth. Each new projects/event/place of work – brings you new experiences and skills as a result.

Do an ATS test

Once you have already finished with an exercise below and created two clouds of skills bound with previous work experience, it’s time to pass an ATS test. Companies invest tons of money to optimize HR’s daily routine jobs to make their daily processes more effective. That’s why huge companies invest money into ATS solutions, especially in the US.

Applicant tracking systems are not so complicated if too deep into the core processes inside. The main idea is to scan a candidate’s CV for keywords, which were already by a hiring manager for a dedicated position. If your CV 2023 contains enough keywords, which match with HR’s list – your chances to get your resume inbox are pretty good.

ATS hack tip. If you have a job position description, you can use it as a source of desired keywords, which recruiter already included into their check-list.

Who should use functional resume in 2023 – Best Practices

Below we listed key portraits of persons, who would get value from using this type of resume template:

• • Candidates, who decided to change their job area completely and look for a job in a different industry or domain.

• • If your portfolio matters. When you don’t have an impressive enough portfolio to amaze the recruiter.

Not always a functional resume could be the best solution for entry-level candidates.

Functional resume examples 2023

FREE to download functional resume examples

We have prepared the most viewed and downloaded functional resume templates 2023 in MS Word format. All you need to do is just download the resume template and edit it the way you need to get the best results.