Resumes for First Time Job Seekers

Writing your first resume to obtain your first teenage or college job requires a little creativity. On average, every job opening gets 250 resumes.

​You want to have a strong resume but you may not have a lot of experience to generate interest from prospective employers. You will therefore, have to work hard to market your skills.
Read how to maximize your resume for the best results…

​Use a Functional Format

​A functional resume format might be the best selection for a new job seeker. This type of format allows you to present your qualifications by skills rather that by employment history. It solves the problem for someone who might not have many jobs to speak of, or they have done a lot of jobs that are unrelated to each other. You can extract the skills you have obtained from each position that you worked and put them into categories.
 
The layout should be interesting, enough to attract interest but not detract from your presentation. You can emphasize important information with the use of bold lettering, capitalization and indentations. Carry any formatting throughout the entire document to remain consistent. Besides formatting, the resume has six distinct parts. 

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1. Name and Contact Information – Your address, phone number and email address.
2. Objective Statement – Keep this focused and narrowed.
3. Education – List names of schools, dates attended and degrees earned. Also include major and minor subjects, certifications, honors, awards and GPAs.
4. Key Skills and Qualifications – This is the most relevant part of the functional resume. Try to align your skills to the key skills that are in the job posting. Examples of skills are customer service, graphic design, leadership, or computer software and hardware. Under each skill, give details of how you obtained the skill. You may have completed a project, led a youth group, volunteered or participated in sports. These skills and qualifications do not have to be listed in chronological order such as in other resume formats. They should be listed in order of relevance and importance.
5. Work Experience – While some of this might have been written in the Key Skills section, if you have relevant work experience working for a business, you should definitely include it.
6. Awards and Honors – If you have not listed these in the Education section, list any career, leadership, academic or athletic honors that you obtained. 

​Advantages of the Functional Resume

​As stated in the beginning of this guide, the advantage to using a functional resume is to keep the emphasis on key relevant skills that you possess to match you as a good fit for a job. It allows job seekers to combine accomplishments from several different jobs to provide a powerful impact. In a traditional resume, these skills might be overlooked.  Your functional resume will minimize the disadvantage of inexperience in the workforce. It will also downplay frequent job changes.

​Disadvantages to the Functional Resume

​Employers might not like the lack of logical flow. They are accustomed to looking at Chronological resumes. The void of strong experience might be very noticeable. You might have a hiring manager who places importance on work experience that includes notable employers.
With this said, a functional resume is a still a great option for people who are looking to change professions, return to the job market after a long absence, or who are trying to minimize fair-to-average career movement.  This format is also appropriate for teen job seekers, new graduates, candidates with limited work experience, and individuals whose work history is a mixed bag of unrelated experience.

Here are more articles to help you with examples!

See a High School Resume Here!

Skills Instead of Work Experience

McDonald's Functional Resume