How to Write a Combination Résumé (+Example)

Learn how to create a combination format résumé and showcase your skills and experience.

Combination Résumé Example

If you’ve got a good few years of experience under your belt, a chronological résumé is your best bet in terms of résumé format. If you’re just starting your career, though, or you’re in a creative profession or you have a lengthy list of impressive achievements, then a functional résumé or CV is the way to go.

But if you’re going through a career change or you’ve only had a few long-term jobs, you might need a hybrid or combination résumé – something that places emphasis on the skills you’ve acquired throughout your career.

So, if you’re, indeed, looking to write a combination résumé, you’ve come to the right place! Here, we’ll walk you through the steps to creating an effective and professional document in next to no time.

Tips to Follow

Before you begin curating all your work experience and skills onto your blank document, you should have some clear goals in mind. Follow the tips listed below to get started.

1. Identify Your Achievements First

To create the perfect résumé, you’ll need to take a step back and review your work experience, achievements and prominent skills that you have gained over the years. This will help you identify how you will fit your career summary within the combination résumé structure. Once you’ve created your list, choose the top skills and achievements that will best showcase your abilities and match the job that you’re applying to.

2. Use Quantifiable Examples

Quantifiable examples are more important than ever before. With limited space to include your work experience, it’s necessary to show how the skills you applied resulted in a successful outcome. To help you clearly articulate your actions, you could use the STAR method (describe the Situation, talk about the Task, show your Actions and highlight the positive Result).

3. Highlight Transferable Skills

If you’re making a career or industry change, transferable skills are all you have to prove your worth – especially when you’re competing against other candidates who do have relevant experience in your chosen field. More often than not, these soft skills will be highly valuable to employers and can be the make or break of securing an interview for your dream job. They should be accompanied by industry-specific skills, and they should be visible at the top of your hybrid résumé.

Structure to Follow

Like all other résumé templates, a combination format document must follow a particular structure. Here are the formatting rules that your document should stick to.

1. Personal Information

Like all other résumés, your personal information and contact details should be visible within the header of your document. That said, you don’t have to include your full address; your location will suffice. For example, if you live in Finsbury Park (an area in North London), you could just write your location as ‘London’. Meanwhile, if you have a professional website or online portfolio, be sure to add a link to it as a URL.

2. Personal Profile / Career Summary

Your professional profile or career summary is designed to be an introduction of yourself and your previous work experience. Therefore, you should highlight your biggest career achievements in this paragraph, as well as list the most important skills that you can bring to the table. You can also use this opportunity to outline your short- and long-term goals – something which is recommended if you’re changing industries or you have recently had a career break.

3. Key Skills

Following your personal summary should be a section dedicated to your key skills; this can be a mixture of both soft and hard skills, including specific computer programs and databases you’re familiar with. You can also get inspiration for skills to include in your résumé by rereading the job description. Your skills section will usually be the same length as your work experience, so use this space to persuade the hiring manager that you have the necessary skills to succeed in the position.

4. Work Experience

Your work experience section won’t be as long as a traditional chronological résumé. Instead, you should only include your main achievements during your time in the roles you list. Indeed, there’s no need to list the most basic responsibilities of the job under each position. Instead, include dynamic points that show the success of your efforts. For example, if you’re a beautician, instead of writing ‘hair removal’ under your duties, you could say ‘performed 10 full-body hair removals per day’.

And if you were the fastest worker in the salon, you could write ‘commended for being the fastest and most efficient worker’. So, even though you’re targeting a new profession, this experience will show that you’re efficient and able to work under pressure.

5. Education

Unless you’re a recent graduate, your education details shouldn’t be the main focus of your résumé, which is why this section should be left for last. That said, if you have a degree of some kind, you should still add this information, but do leave out your high school diploma and any A-Level qualifications. These actually won’t matter to the employer – unless, of course, a GCSE in Maths or English is specified within the job description.

Example

Regardless of whether you’re changing careers, you’re returning to the workforce after a career break or you’re a bit of a job-hopper, we’ve created a template for you to visualise what your end product should look like.

Combination CV/résumé sample

So, now you’re fully prepared to create your own combination résumé, nothing is stopping you from putting your best foot forward and impressing hiring managers with your abilities and skillset! It’s time to start your job search and find the position you’ve always been looking for.

What makes you lean towards a combination format résumé? Let us know your thoughts by joining the conversation below.