Chronological Resume
The chronological resume reveals your education, employment or military service, community activities, and perhaps other information about you in chronological order with the most recent event under each heading listed first. The entries in the chronological resume will be a branch of the service, colleges, groups, organizations, clubs, employers, and teams. The content of each entry describes what you did, when you did it, and what you accomplished. Naturally, you will write each entry with the consumer in mind: you know what employers are looking for, so you'll describe your experiences in a way that proves you've got what it takes to do the job and did it well.
The chronological resume is the most common type, and most employers prefer it. It enables you to highlight the jobs you have had, the organizations you have been affiliated with, and the positions of leadership you have held. It lets the employer track your career, to see evidence of advancement, to see diversity, to see accomplishments. Employers like the chronological resume because it enables them to make their own conclusions about your attributes, your competencies, your abilities. On the negative side, the chronological resume might fail to show the abilities and experience you've gained in the military. For example, if you simply reveal your military experience from the most recent assignment back in time, it is extremely difficult to bring similar skills or abilities, gained in different assignments, together in one place on the resume. As you write a strictly chronological resume, you inevitably find yourself wanting to say the same thing over and over again.
Functional Resume
The functional resume is entirely different. Instead of listing your posts and assignments chronologically, the functional resume describes your competencies or abilities as represented by your jobs, activities, athletics, travel, or whatever.
Suppose in your military career you gained significant experience as a recruiter. You correctly translate this experience to the civilian field of human resources. Now, if you chose a chronological resume, you would detail each post or assignment you had, and slowly but surely the resume reviewer would get a picture of your experience in the field of human resources.
A functional resume would cure this problem by bringing the relevant experience and ability together into one resume entry. You can readily see that the functional resume can be a very effective tool. It can convey an ability that will spark an employer's interest. But a word of caution: employers don't like the functional resume if it isn't well organized and well written. Many people use a functional resume to cover up gaps in employment and to portray weak information in an apparently strong way. Employment managers, as a rule, would rather make their own conclusions about your abilities or competencies.
Follow these rules in deciding whether to use the functional resume: (1) be sure that you and not somebody else chooses the headings; (2) make certain you really possess evidence of the attributes described by those headings; and (3) be certain the functional resume is the only way you can reveal your qualities.
Combination Resume - The Chrono-funk
Finally, the combination resume, which we like to call it the chrono-funk, is a chronological resume with one or two functional headings or functional subheadings. In other words, you follow a chronological format for education and other aspects of your life. But to reveal your military experience, that is, your employment, you use some functional headings or functional subheadings to bring together your strongest qualities in one place.
Which Resume Is Right for You?
Most people just getting out of college or trade school should use the chronological resume because employers prefer it. Short-timers should probably use a chrono-funk resume so they can reveal the strongest points of their military careers in one place rather than scattering their experience all over the many posts and assignments they've held. You should stay away from the functional resume simply because most employers don't like it.
