What is a Combination or Hybrid Resume?

When to Use Two Resume Formats Together

A Combination Resume or Hybrid Resume is an effective, eye catching document for workers to display long-term accumulated professional experience. It gets right to the highlights of one's unique skills, talents, and accomplishments.

When to Use the Combination Approach

A combination resume puts together or combines both the chronological resume and the functional resume. It has the features and certain layout design aspects of both that include a compact chronological work history supplemented with a nuts-and-bolts presentation of one's mist useful skills.

A combination resume maps out the knowledge, skill sets, talents, and abilities that the worker it represents has gathered from his or her total work experience, outlined in the reverse-chronological order, newest to oldest. Besides all this usefulness, this particular resume format can save lots of room and eliminate several pages of wordy material.

Perfect for Experienced Workers

This resume is a great choice for experienced workers, freelancers, and older workers that are still in the job market or are returning to it.

These job seekers have sets of highly valuable skills, talents, and accomplishments to offer a new employer, and may have worked at several companies over the years. The experience they have accumulated cannot usually be met by employees having less experience.

In fact, I once visited a paint company that used computerized machines to mix the various shades of each color. However, the master paint mixer had worked there for over 40 years and he could still see slight variations in shades of white paint that the computer missed. He had become more valuable than the computer.

Useful for the Freelancer

Freelance workers can also benefit from building this combination or hybrid resume. This is true because, as a freelancer, such a professional may work on one huge project a year, or on hundreds of smaller projects for many different individuals or companies.

In fact, a freelancer may work on dozens or a hundred different projects in their very first year of freelancing. This is true of the freelance writer, or an actor doing commercials and several smaller parts in theatrical productions. A freelance artist may finish several small projects in a year or work on a 70-foot sculpture that takes two years to complete.

Pros and Cons for This Resume Format

There are both good points and bad points to using the combination or hybrid resume.

Advantages

• Combination resumes can provide your future employers with the desired chronological design format that they have come to expect. They like to be able to get a grasp of your work history all at once and they can do it with a combination resume almost as well as with the totally chronological-style resume.
• In building the combination resume, however, you do not always need to list the dates of your employment. Instead, you can let this be a conversation starter with your interviewer.
• These hybrid resume can quickly and clearly highlight your specific skill sets and accomplishments to your advantage. Your work related assets stand out and catch the eye of the interviewer in this type of resume.
• The hybrid resume is eye-catching, because it is a bit different, so it should catch the interviewer's eye because of that very quality.

Disadvantages

• Combination resumes can begin to repeat themselves too much, because you may possess similar job tasks or skill sets that you have used in different job positions and/or for different companies.
• Proofread this type of resume carefully and try to eliminate any excess repetition. The samples below can help you judge what is too repetitious and what is not.
• This hybrid type of resume can be longer than the distinctly chronological or totally functional-type resume. If you find yourself typing beyond three pages, you probably need to condense your material.

A Simple Combination Resume

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Building the Combination/Hybrid Resume

There are several ways in which to order the sections of this type of resume. Experiment with section placement order to find one that makes sense to you and is attractive to the eye.

The beginning of your combination or hybrid resume will be similar to any other style of resume. It will include your basic contact information:

First Name, Middle Initial, Last Name

Street Address

City, State, Zip Code

Area Code/Phone Number

Area Code/Cell Phone Number

Email Address

After your Contact information, you will place a Summary or Qualifications Statement. (You may also include a Career Objective, if you feel that it would be useful.)

CAREER OBJECTIVE

Examples:

To lead the top furniture company in the United States to increased sales and profits in the position of Director of Marketing.

To significantly increase the number of GED graduates in Broward County by becoming Director of Adult Education for the county educational system.

To drive an outstanding sales department toward producing the highest level of annual sales in New Mexico in the position of Director of Sales.

SUMMARY

(see sample resumes below)

QUALIFICATIONS

(see sample resumes)

Next, list your best professional accomplishments, and use facts and figures whenever possible. Be very specific. You want to put a hard focus on skills and abilities that will transfer to your new employer's company.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND SKILLS

(see sample resumes)

After accomplishments, list your work history, but not necessarily the dates of employment. For example, if you worked for a temporary employment service and worked on a different assignment each week, list the companies for which you worked, but not the dates. If you worked for dozens of companies, list the major ones and/or the ones for which you achieved your most important accomplishments. Then, let the matter of employment dates be a topic for interview discussion.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

(see sample resumes)

When you have more than one job category to describe:

You may have worked for a substantial amount of time in more than one field of work you want to list on your resume, and you can place each one of these separately with it's own section for accomplishments and skills (see sample resumes included here).

You may want to title each job-category section with any of these descriptors, or others that you may know:

• Administration
• Auditing
• Bookkeeping
• Communications
• Counseling
• Curriculum Development
• Customer/Client Service
• Data Entry
• Editing
• Inventory Control/Logistics
• Management/Supervision
• Marketing
• Medical/Health
• Merchandising
• Program Development
• Public Relations
• Sales
• Training
• Writing

A More Complex Hybrid: Page 1

A More Complex Hybrid: Page 2

© 2007 Patty Inglish MS

Comments

Kiev escort on September 14, 2010:

Intresting aricles you place here.

It would be useful to read anything more concerning this topic.

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Lora

Darcetha on July 12, 2010:

Good information to know, if you are an older worker, who has been out of the job hunt for a while.

Ambition398 on September 29, 2009:

People tend to think there is only one way to write a resume. Great hub for pointing out some alternatives.

admin@london_escorts on June 13, 2009:

Thanks for this great info. I will update my resume now. =))

Malaya on July 01, 2008:

Thank you, this is helpful.

resumeinfo on October 24, 2007:

Good stuff. Nice example. Thanks for sharing with the rest of us.