The distinction between the chronological format and the combination format is that the chronological format resume is extremely simple to understand. Hiring executive would normally begin to read the chronological resume at the bottom, where the record of your work or experience in the profession is placed and moves upward.
Handling Employment Gaps
If there are a few breaks in your employment, it will be extremely noticeable in the chronological format. This is a reason why majority of hiring executives prefer the chronological resume format. It is simpler to read – in addition, it does not leave much to the imagination. This could be a huge plus if you have been in the same position for a long time, as it gives an account of stability and development in your field of work.
There are many reasons for having breaks in employment. It could be due to raising a family, poor health or education. It could also be due to a layoff, military service or just generally having a tough time searching for work due to a stiff job market.
Whatever the reason, if you have gaps in your employment, you’ll want to use the combination resume – because it will allow you to highlight your skills, accomplishments and achievements, rather than how long you were out of work.
Link Your Skills and the Job Requirements Together
First, you must build a resume that plainly points out at the top what kind of position you are looking for. Put in a segment that has a summary of your career; what areas you specialize in and your career progression. However, make sure to point out all the things that are important to the company. Highlight your managerial experience and skills that match what the employer is looking for.
If there is an advertisement for a job, look at it carefully and make sure that you make a link between the requirements of the job and all the things you have achieved in your career. Use a “skills” segment to list of all your skills so that the reader will be able to locate it all in one place. In addition, this is essential if the company uses resume scanning technology. Using keywords and industry jargon will guarantee that your resume will be selected from the database in response to a keyword search.
If you are a career changer, writing a resume that wins isn’t rocket science – but it does take time and planning. By tailoring your resume to fit your specific situation and the needs of each particular employer, you will ensure that you get plenty of interview calls.

What in the world is a “non-interview” strategy?

OK. You’ve made the tough decision to change jobs with its tasks of rewriting your resume, distributing it to various outlets, prepping for interviews. But have you ever heard of the “non-interview”?

Maybe you’ve already started to upgrade your resume and get it ready for circulation. You hope that it will generate interviews. And you figure to do that by getting your resume into mass distribution through job websites like Monster and HotJobs, direct and email approaches to companies, answering some ads, maybe contacting some agencies and recruiters.

Sounds like a plan, doesn’t it? Everyone does it that way, don’t they? But if you talk to them you’ll probably discover, like we did, that they’re taking weeks and months to get any results!

These poor results from following a traditional job search methodology caught our attention many years ago when we realized that the job market follows the same rules as the business market. And the “alternative job search and non-traditional career advancement” movement was born.

Very simply, this innovative approach understands that you run a job campaign like a small entrepreneurial business. We call it “becoming a job entrepreneur.” And part of the program is learning how to conduct a “non-interview.”

You see, most employers will be interested in you if they can see you as a productive member of their team. That means you have to represent yourself as someone who can make a difference by showing you’ve done your homework . . . you’ve taken the time to find out how to make an employer’s job easier and how to make a specific contribution to bottom line.

An employer can’t find that out by reading your resume which focuses attention on what you used to do for someone else. And he/she can’t find that out by asking you some interview questions to see if you ump through all the hoops.

The only way a decision-maker can gain insight into your ability to make a contribution is by engaging in a dialogue, not an interview. In a dialogue, you have the opportunity to get your best thinking out on the table and you can ask insightful questions that position you as a problem-solver. You may even bring a proposal to the session that outlines your potential contributions in writing.

Of course, it’s up to you to create the opportunity for a “non-interview” so that you can seriously upgrade your ability to win an employer’s high-level interest. It’s all part of a breakthrough approach to job change using “alternative” approaches.

When you utilize this non-traditional plan two exciting things can happen. First, you can be meeting face-to-face with decision-makers in a matter of days. And, secondly, you can be entertaining a job offer in as little as two weeks. As we like to say, “Alternative job search strategies rule!”