How should your résumé be structured?
Choose the structure that makes your career story easiest to understand. For many people, a chronological or hybrid format makes progression and relevant experience clear; career changers may need a different emphasis. There is no single formula for every person or opportunity.
For candidates
Reverse-chronological
Most recent role first. It makes progression, continuity and recent scope easy to understand, and works well when your experience follows a clear path.
Functional
Organised by capability rather than employer. It can help explain a career change or non-linear path, but dates and progression should still remain clear enough to give the reader context.
Hybrid
A concise capability summary followed by chronological experience. It can frame your value proposition while preserving the context and progression the reader needs.
Format decisions that support clarity
- Single column beats multi-column for machine parsing.
- Standard section headings — Experience, Education — parse more reliably than clever ones.
- Avoid text inside images, headers, footers and text boxes.
- Submit as the format the posting asks for; when unspecified, PDF.