As the college years wind down, your thoughts must begin turning to that next phase of adulthood, finding a job. While most of us shudder to think of it, obtaining meaningful employment begins with the construction of a resume.

However, creating a resume today is not all that daunting a task as every college offers a career placement center. Not only will the office be the home to employment leads, it is a place to get help with the construction of a resume and to even learn about specific interview techniques.

But before heading down to the center for help with that resume, you owe it to yourself to learn a little bit about the lingo. Essentially there are three basic types of resumes to consider: chronological, functional and targeted. Most importantly, in the world of work there are sophisticated theories about which type of resume works best for specific job openings.

Resume Types

Below we offer a brief explanation of the basic formats and a sample of the format. Each format should begin with name, address, and contact information followed by your career objective.

Chronological: A chronological resume lists the various jobs you have held. The listing is created by starting with the most recent position then working backwards through time to list the other jobs you have held.

Under each job, it is common to list the major duties performed while performing that role. A simple example:

EDUCATION:

* Handled sales transactions.
* Assisted in training new cashiers.

Etc.

With this type of resume format, the focus is on several years of relevant or noteworthy work experience. This format works extremely well when a person can show that over time the positions they have held demonstrate increasing amounts of responsibility.

Functional: The functional resume format focuses on the skills you have developed as well as your accomplishments. It is more a list of highlights and speaks to what you have done while omitting any reference as to when you developed those skills.

Again, after providing your name and address along with your career objective:

EDUCATION

* Student Government Representative, UMO Student Senate
*Resident Assistant, UMO Department of Residential Life.
* Teaching Assistant, UMO Physics and Mathematics Departments.
* Tutor, Outward Bound Program.
* Volunteer Tutor, Milford Public Schools.

etc.

Targeted: The targeted resume may actually use either of the two types of format noted above. The critical difference is that resume is written for a specific position within a company.

The major difference is that a targeted resume is customized to highlight the experience you have that is directly relevant to the job you are applying for.

As a sample, take our functional resume above, add some chronology to it, then focus on a job opening: an ad for a high school math teacher:

EDUCATION

Teaching Assistant, Physics Department, University of Maine, 1/09 – present.
Tutor, math lab, UMaine Orono (January 2008 – present).
Student Teacher, Bangor High School, Bangor, Maine (Spring 2008).
Sophomore Exploration – Leavitt Area High School, Turner Maine, May-June 2007.

Etc. You can also include a list of activities if any where directly related to the job opening.

Which Format Is Best?

While it definitely takes more time to write a targeted resume, the general consensus is it is worth the effort to do so. In fact, the days of creating one resume, then blasting it off to fifty or more companies is no longer considered good practice. Of course, the targeted format works best if you posses the qualifications and experience that match those needed for the opening.

Functional resumes are considered to be the better format for people with very little experience in a specific field. For example, if you do not have any human resource work experience but have excellent communication skills and extensive coursework in the business field you can highlight those skills in the functional format. Lastly, the functional resume generally allows more flexibility as to how you want to organize pertinent information.

That said, the chronological format is the most common one used. It works really well for those people who have practical work experience and logical periods of continuous employment. It works even better when it is organized in a format that shows demonstrated growth.

Today most resumes become some combination of the above formats. As our example notes, targeting your skills and background to a specific position can also be strengthened by applying chronological order and highlighting functional attributes.

Use Career Center

So don’t fear the creation of a resume. Now that you are armed with the basics of the format, make an appointment with the campus career center office.

But, before you have that first meeting, draft the areas you feel you want to highlight so that you have some hard copy to work with when you arrive. But be open to advice and assistance.

Your campus career counselors will have excellent expertise and they can help you decide the best format for you. Most importantly, those career counselors can be a very important source of potential job leads.

Let’s face it, some folks don’t give a whole lot of thought to how their web site bloated with advertising appears to the average reader. However, some sites are so littered with selling that you find yourself turning away from the site before really examining specific content.

Then again, perhaps you are someone who really doesn’t care much for the idea of ads in the first place.

If so, you will likely want to download a copy of AdBlockPlus to get rid of as many of those intrusions as you can. And today, if your heart desires, you can go one step further, and make a personal statement with yet another application that replaces those advertising eyesores with art work from a variety of creative folks.

AdBlockPlus

Downloading a copy of AdBlockPlus will block 80-90% of those ads cluttering your favorite reading material. The software features a pre-determined list of ad materials to block depending on your home country.

AdBlockPlus simply whites out the majority of the ads, creating blank space. The feature not only eliminates the advertising that serves as a distraction, it reduces the overall visual clutter that is often pervasive on web sites today.

While AdBlockPlus fails to white out all, it is constantly being updated, a step that allows it to perform better with each passing upload of a site. A typical page features more than a 100 ads – more often than not, with AdBlockPlus that number will be reduced to single digits.

Add-Art

Those who have pursued a download of AdBlockPlus or now think they may want to pursue a download and are also using Mozilla as a web browser may also want to go one step further by pulling in a copy of Add-Art. Developed in the Eyebeam OpenLab, Add-Art is free and in the public domain just as AdBlockPlus.

The program takes the white out feature one step further, replacing the advertising clutter with art. Featuring material from art shows that are hand selected by curators of contemporary artists, the idea is to bring this work to a wider audience in a way that also provides a positive service.

The Add-Art folks insist they will bring new art shows to readers every 2 weeks. As for that art, users must understand that the software platform and the art represent separate entities. It is of course possible that you may like the concept, replacing the ads with art work, but not like the art work that is being chosen to replace the ads.

Techies May Want to Pursue Next Generation Concepts

For most of us, the chance to eliminate the ads and replace them with white space is more than enough. However, those with a creative flair will likely be enamored with the chance to import new art in a random manner as they surf their various internet sites.

But the real future could lie in giving the user more choices as to what they might replace the ads with. A program that allows the user to select from a bank of image clusters (let your imagination run here) would take the experience one step further.

Adding multiple options to get to a variety of styles that users could select depending on their whim is more in line with the current move towards giving the user complete control over their web experience.

Of course, the reverse is also true. Given the importance of advertising for sites, there will likely be yet another generation of programmers who seek to find other ways to ensure those ads appear in some manner.