Earlier I posted on career growth and development and some ideas and insights from the SHRM Talent Management Conference, and as I was looking through some of the results from a SHRM survey released this week I realized that there is an interesting disconnect. While we want to look at employees as more valuable than their current job title for development purposes, we don’t want to do do that up front when they approach us as candidates. In fact, 66% of organizations prefer chronological resumes to functional resumes (source: SHRM).

For reference, chronological resumes list jobs in order from most to least recent; functional resumes focus on skills and experience instead of job history.

Now I will admit that when I’m recruiting, I prefer resumes in chronological order. I’ve seen too many instances over the years where people use functional resumes to make themselves seem more qualified for a position than they really were.

However, it is interesting to note that I’ve also seen high level professionals make use of functional resumes with no discernible negative results. When someone has 15-20 years of experience in a specific field and a variety of specialized skills, the functional resume might serve a better purpose than chronological format.

Additional information from the survey available below. Check it out–there’s definitely some good stuff in there for you to review.