Combination Resume Format
The best of both worlds. The combination format leads with your strongest skills and follows up with a solid work history, giving recruiters both the what and the where of your experience.
What Is the Combination Resume Format?
The combination resume format, often called the hybrid format, blends elements of both the chronological and functional approaches. It typically opens with a professional summary and a detailed skills section organized by category, followed by a reverse-chronological work experience section with traditional bullet-point accomplishments.
This dual structure lets you lead with your most marketable skills while still providing the job-by-job detail that recruiters expect. It is especially effective when you have deep expertise in certain areas and want to make sure those skills are not buried under your third or fourth job listing.
The combination format offers better ATS compatibility than a pure functional resume because it includes clearly labeled work experience entries with dates and titles. At the same time, the prominent skills section ensures that your core competencies are visible at the top of the page, where they are most likely to catch a recruiter or keyword scanner.
Who Should Use a Combination Resume?
- Experienced professionals with both deep skills and a solid work history
- Candidates applying for roles that require specific technical or specialized expertise
- Professionals pivoting to a related industry where their skills transfer directly
- Mid-career workers whose most relevant skills are spread across multiple roles
- Senior-level candidates who want to showcase leadership skills alongside career history
Combination Resume Structure
Pros and Cons
Advantages
- Showcases both skills and work history in a balanced layout
- Better ATS compatibility than a functional format since it includes full work history
- Ideal for professionals whose best skills are spread across multiple roles
- Gives you control over what the recruiter sees first — skills or experience
- Flexible enough to emphasize either skills or timeline depending on the role
Disadvantages
- Can result in a longer resume if not carefully edited
- Requires more effort to organize without redundancy between skills and experience
- Less familiar to some recruiters than the standard chronological format
- Risk of duplicating accomplishments in both the skills and experience sections
Combination Resume Example
Here is a condensed example showing the key sections of a combination resume in Markdown format:
# Morgan Chen morgan.chen@email.com | (555) 456-7890 | morgenchen.dev ## Summary Full-stack engineer with 6+ years building scalable web applications. Combines deep React/Node.js expertise with proven team leadership and DevOps experience. ## Core Skills ### Frontend Development - React, TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind CSS - Accessibility (WCAG 2.1 AA) and performance optimization ### Backend & Infrastructure - Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda) - CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and incident response ### Team Leadership - Mentored 4 junior engineers to mid-level promotions - Led architecture decisions for 3 greenfield projects ## Experience ### Senior Engineer | CloudScale Inc. *Feb 2022 — Present* - Rebuilt checkout flow reducing load time from 4s to 800ms - Designed microservices architecture handling 10K req/sec ### Software Engineer | WebAgency *Jun 2019 — Jan 2022* - Delivered 15+ client projects on React and Node.js stack - Introduced automated testing raising coverage to 90% ## Education ### B.S. Computer Science | State University — 2019
Copy this Markdown into the ResumeMD editor to see it rendered with any of our 32 templates.
Tips for Your Combination Resume
- 1.Keep the skills section focused on 3-4 categories with 2-3 bullet points each. The goal is a highlight reel, not an exhaustive list.
- 2.Avoid duplicating the same accomplishments in both the skills section and work experience. Each section should contribute unique information.
- 3.Order your skills categories to match the job description. If the listing leads with "team leadership," make that your first skill group.
- 4.Use the work experience section for role-specific achievements and the skills section for cross-cutting abilities that span multiple roles.
- 5.Aim to keep the total resume to one page (or two for senior roles). The combination format can run long if you are not disciplined about conciseness.
Recommended Templates
These templates work especially well with the combination format:
Other Resume Formats
Chronological Format
The chronological resume format lists your work experience in reverse order, starting with your most recent position. It is the most common and widely accepted format by recruiters and ATS systems.
Also: Reverse-ChronologicalFunctional Format
The functional resume format organizes your resume around skill categories rather than a chronological work timeline. It emphasizes what you can do over where and when you did it.
Also: Skills-BasedReady to build your combination resume?
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