What Is a Hybrid Resume?

If it’s been a while since you wrote a resume or updated your existing one, you may be searching for modern resume examples or wondering what new resume styles are out there. Regardless of what you find, keep in mind that the most effective resume formats must clearly highlight your strongest accomplishments so that hiring managers can’t miss the value you will bring to their organizations.

They are concise and list your greatest hits as prominently as possible, minimizing the risk that they will be overlooked. In a traditional resume, this means your successes are arranged from most to least impressive in a bulleted list under a brief description of your previous jobs.

For job seekers with a large number of achievements or those whose greatest attainments occurred more than 15 years ago or outside a paid position, however, it can be difficult to figure out how to call attention to the most important pieces information. This is where hybrid resumes are most effective.

The hybrid resume is a best-of-both-worlds approach that leverages the benefits of functional and chronological resumes. It separates your critical accomplishments into a section of their own, while still including the rest of your professional experience in a separate portion of the document. To learn more about whether this style is right for you and how to compose a successful combination resume, check out the guide below.

What is a hybrid resume?

A hybrid resume is a combination functional and chronological resume, utilizing both a career highlights section and a traditional, reverse-chronological job history. Many modern resume examples use this technique in order to emphasize your greatest successes while still giving a basic description of the work experience you bring to the table.

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What is the best resume format for me?

A quick search of hybrid resume examples will quickly reveal that this style is an effective resume format for a wide range of situations. As a combination of functional and chronological resume styles, this format allows you to highlight your top achievements—even if they occurred during your education, volunteer work, or several years ago—without risking the negative associations many hiring managers have for 100% skill-based documents.

Frequently, a hybrid approach is the best resume format for these job seekers:

• Recent graduates: recent graduates rarely have much work experience in their prospective fields. Hybrid style resumes give budding professionals the opportunity to push their educational projects and internships to the top of their resume, emphasizing the skills they bring to the table despite their lack of paid experience.
• Applicants with an extensive background of highly impressive successes: one of the most essential resume layout tips is that accomplishments should always be easy to spot with just a glance. A combination resume allows job seekers to prominently display a track record of numerous achievements, above the list of prior professional duties and responsibilities.
• Candidates with notable and relevant achievements early in their careers: new resume styles don’t include descriptions for positions held more than 15 years ago in the chronological work history. A hybrid resume can highlight accomplishments from before this time without specifying when they happened.
• Career changers with transferrable accomplishments: using a hybrid resume will enable you to compile achievements together from any point in your career to help you transition into a new industry.

One of the great benefits of a combination resume is that it is an effective resume format for job seekers at any point in their careers. The two hybrid resume examples below—the first from a banking professional changing careers into social work and the second from an executive chef with many years of experience—demonstrate just how flexible this approach is: