Functional CV Layout - Also Use For Interim Jobs

A Functional CV is different from the normal chronological CV and is most often used for career change involving a move to a different sector, or it comes into it's own for interim management jobs.

I would recommend restricting this type of CV format to just 2 pages: page 1 concentrates on a detailed description of your major skill sets and page 2 shows your career history without any great amount of detail.

Because this is great for career change too, an appropriate cover letter example to use with this CV layout is shown at Direct Approach

A chronological CV focuses on dates and employers, whereas this type of CV demonstrates abilities and illustrates your career history by the application of your specialist skills. You can download and print the CV example on this page to help you write your own.

Your CV will be elevated by punchy descriptions of the jobs you have completed and by the addition of value-added skills such as Leadership, Language skills, People skills and knowledge of new technologies used in the office.

How To Prepare Your Functional CV

This is how to approach the preparation of your skills based CV. Instead of showing your career history in detail with duties, responsibilities and achievements, in this type of CV your career history is split into two parts.

The main part breaks down your career experience into functional or discipline related sections, enabling them to be assimilated more easily by the potential employer. Look at the headings on page 1 of this CV example to see what I mean; these headings are relevant to a Change Manager, yours may be different.

It is important that the skills you showcase here are directly relevant to the position you are applying for. Don't waste you time by highlighting your great production management experience if the position is in finance. You should highlight your achievements in a finance environment and focus on relevant aspects of that field of work.

Change Management Functional CV

You can click on the above CV images to print or enlarge either or both pages.

To drastically improve your functional CV, use bullets to transform lists that would otherwise make tedious reading in paragraph form, or that would benefit by a cleaner layout. They make the job of reading your CV more pleasant for the reader. Ideally, you should use a maximum of 5 bullet points to illustrate your key achievements.

As you can see, this particular CV is quite different from a normal chronological CV and is really very useful for career change or for interim management jobs. The functional CV layout best demonstrates your specific abilities and illustrates your career history by the application of your specialist skills.

You are here: Functional CV Layout

You might also want to visit Career Change Resume or continue to find out more about Interim Jobs.

Return to CV Writing Page or go back to the Your Career Change Home Page

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