Functional Resume Templates for Career Transitions and Fresh Starts

Jump-start your career with one of our expert-made functional resume templates, perfect for highlighting your skills and education.
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What Are Functional Resume Templates?

Functional resume templates are document presets designed to emphasize your education and abilities rather than your work experience.

Instead of chronologically listing your past employment, accomplishments, and job titles, functional resume templates put your skills front and center. This makes them perfect for students, recent graduates, and career changers.

This skill-based resume template helps you point out your key strengths in situations where you have little to no professional history. You can show the value you bring as an entry-level professional or as a career transitioner with past efforts not directly tied to the role that you’re applying for.

The templates feature clean layouts and strategic information placement to make your capabilities easy to spot and understand. This gives you the highest chances of grabbing the recruiter’s attention and convincing them of your qualifications.

Why Choose Our Functional Resume Templates?

There are many reasons to choose our functional resume templates. Here are the four main ones:

  1. Skill-based storytelling. In many cases, recruiters only spend a couple of seconds skimming through a resume before deciding whether to analyze it more in depth. Our functional resume templates are designed to communicate your key strengths clearly and immediately, ensuring recruiters stay to examine the entire document.

  2. Professional layouts. Our templates are designed by industry professionals and HR experts to ensure maximum readability for human reviewers. Moreover, the templates feature optimized structures to help them pass the screening of many Applicant Tracking System solutions.

  3. High levels of customizability. You can adjust everything from the arrangement of sections to the font and colors of your template by using our resume builder. Our simple and powerful interface lets you modify your entire resume with a single click, with everything being rendered in real time for you to view.

  4. Exceptional versatility. Functional resume templates are great for students and recent graduates, but also for more experienced professionals who are switching careers, freelancers, and anyone else who has a varied employment background and non-linear work experience.

When You Should Use Functional Resume Templates

Here are some situations in which our functional resume templates will perform the best:

  1. You’re a student or a recent graduate. If you’re still studying or have graduated just recently, you likely have limited work history. However, you likely have a strong academic background and project-based experience, all of which you can showcase using functional resume templates that are purpose-built for this occasion.

  2. You have gaps in employment. Gaps in employment may draw attention away from your expertise. By using a functional resume, you can shift the focus away from periods of unemployment and highlight what you bring to the table instead.

  3. You’re changing careers. If you have work history, but are transitioning to a field where that experience isn’t relevant, you need to lean on your competence. Use a functional resume template to underscore transferable skills that you gained and perfected in your past job positions.

  4. You have plenty of diverse experience. Freelancers and independent contractors often have a diverse range of experience that isn’t specific to a single role. A functional resume can help connect those efforts and create a cohesive story about your abilities.

  5. You want to highlight specific skills. For some roles, recruiters may value particular abilities (e.g., leadership skills, managerial competence, technical aptitude) over a chronological employment timeline. A functional resume allows you to highlight these abilities over multiple job roles.

How to Customize Your Resume Template?

To customize your functional resume template quickly and effortlessly, use our resume builder. The process is pretty simple:

  • Pick a design that you like from our vast collection of resume templates.

  • Fill out the form by adding information in predesignated areas.

  • Customize the template by changing the layout, font, colors, section organization, and more.

With a premium package, you can download your functional resume template or a finished document. Alternatively, you will get a unique link that you can send to the recruiter for free, and they can review your resume.

Functional Resume Templates FAQ

  • Functional resume templates are ATS-friendly, but only with some software solutions. Many Applicant Tracking Systems are set up to focus on a chronological work history and are compatible with chronological resume formats. Still, our functional templates can help you pass most ATS platforms.

  • To choose the right functional resume template for your industry, look for a design that matches the tone of your field. If you’re applying for a corporate role, you can use a professional and minimal template. On the other hand, a modern template is suitable for creative industries.

  • A functional resume template is different from a traditional one in that it emphasizes skills and abilities over work history. This is perfect for students, recent graduates, and other entry-level professionals who don’t have professional experience and want to leverage their skills instead.

  • You can download our functional resume templates in a PDF file format. Alternatively, you can send a unique link to a recruiter and have them review your resume using their browser.

  • Yes, you can convert a functional resume template into another format later by using our resume builder. This way, you can keep the information that you’ve already included, add new details, rearrange the sections, and create a brand new resume with ease in a new format.

  • The fonts and styles that work best for functional resume templates depend on the industry you’re in. In general, simple and readable fonts, like Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica, as well as minimalist design, work across the board and for most job positions.

  • Yes, our functional resume templates are free to use with our resume builder. You can create your resume from scratch and send recruiters a link so they can view it for free. Our premium option allows you to download your resume as a PDF.

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