When “battling” for a job, you need more than one basic weapon.

Job hunting is like an arms race; it keeps escalating, with job hunters’ weapons becoming ever more sophisticated. Since the basic job-hunting weapon is the résumé, you need to load your arsenal with more than one model of that weapon.

Most employers with job openings use résumés at first simply to screen out candidates. If there is something in your résumé that the employer does not like or feels is missing, you can be eliminated from the recruitment process without ever having an interview. Although it is an advertisement of your capabilities and accomplishments, a résumé alone will not get you a job. It is not a brochure that can speak for you. And thanks to the screening-out effect, it may not even open any doors for you.

To avoid screen-out, your well-written (whether by you or a professional service) résumé should have enough “information firepower” to interest the employer in interviewing you. While it is no substitute for an interview, it can get you to the next step, a telephone or in-person interview. So your résumé should be prepared in such a manner that it will stand on its own and provide enough information about you to enable an employer to make an intelligent decision. Remember, all candidates under consideration look very much alike. Your résumé needs to deliver your accomplishments and capabilities with an impact that makes you stand out from the competition and demands the reader’s attention.

You should have three résumés, each of which you can tailor to a specific employer and a specific job opening. The three kinds are a short chronological résumé, a long chronological résumé, and a functional (also called skills) résumé. Each has a different purpose and a different appearance. So let’s look at each separately.

Short Chronological Résumé
A short chronological résumé summarizes, in reverse chronological order, the highlights and accomplishments of the past 10 years of your career. By writing tightly and concentrating only on major accomplishments, chemists can summarize most careers, even those much longer than 10 years, on a single letter-sized sheet of paper—two pages at most.

Brevity remains important because many firms, particularly smaller ones, still screen résumés by hand. Use a short chronological résumé in cases in which your résumé will be screened through a human resources department, rather than going directly to a decision-maker.

Your short chronological résumé should contain enough information to get the reviewer to transfer it into the “will interview” or “send to the decision-maker” stack. By keeping it short, you won’t overwhelm the reviewer working his or her way through a tall pile of résumés.

An increasing number of search firms, executive recruiters, and personnel managers initially use computer software to scan résumés. They use keywords to search for specific skills, education, experience, and other factors important to the job. So your short chronological résumé should contain keywords. These can be technical terms commonly used by fellow professionals in your field. They should not be employer-specific terms or acronyms only used on your last job. Once this information is scanned into a computer database or received by e-mail, reviewers can sort résumés by keywords to produce a customized list of employment candidates in a specific field. For example, a small company looking for a versatile and experienced spectroscopist for its analytical research department may scan résumés for those containing the terms infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry, or the common abbreviations for these terms. Any résumés listing all of these keywords would then be returned to the searcher and represent a high-priority list of candidates to interview.

Experts such as James Challenger of the executive search firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas (Chicago) advise that your short chronological résumé should open with a thorough yet succinct one-paragraph summary of accomplishments that demonstrate a solid track record of accomplishment in your field. Follow this with a summary of accomplishments and responsibilities for each previous position you held.

Long Chronological Résumé
Send your long chronological résumé when directly contacting the hiring decision-maker. Your goal in writing the long chronological résumé is to distinguish yourself from other candidates whose backgrounds resemble yours. To set yourself apart, focus on accomplishments, not on your previous job responsibilities and education.

For example, your rise from entry-level to mid-level bench researcher will be similar to that of many other candidates. To make your long chronological résumé stand out, clearly but briefly describe what you did to earn each of your promotions.

Each employment entry on this résumé should begin with a one-paragraph summary of your responsibilities followed by your specific accomplishments. Bullet points are an excellent way to format your accomplishments. Shorten your descriptions for jobs you held more than 10 years ago.

Functional Résumé
A functional résumé emphasizes your skills and abilities and is organized according to your accomplishments rather than chronologically. The functional résumé permits you to emphasize the skills most relevant to the job opening even if some of them weren’t part of your most recent job. Group your accomplishments by areas of job responsibility. For example, your accomplishments as a manager or team leader should be grouped together and accomplishments as a bench researcher also grouped together. Bold type or bullets can be used to delineate different areas of responsibility.

The functional résumé makes gaps in your employment history or a period of job-hopping less obvious. If you have many skills, this kind of résumé can market you as a versatile chemist who can perform a variety of duties. This is especially valuable to a smaller company that cannot afford to hire a large number of specialists.

Because it emphasizes skills and abilities gained in the course of your employment history rather than chronology, your functional résumé is well suited to help you make a functional job switch or career change, such as moving from the bench to management or vice versa. Job hunters can combine the relevant aspects of previous assignments with continuing education to indicate their qualifications in a different field. For example, a laboratory researcher can emphasize literature searching skills as well as continuing education information science courses to indicate a solid ability to perform as an information scientist. When hunting for this type of position, the chemist should place this information as the section of the functional résumé immediately after an overall summary of accomplishments and abilities.

The overall summary of your accomplishments and abilities should be the opening section of your functional résumé. If you are changing careers, include your new skills and related accomplishments in the overall summary. The summary is often the only part of your résumé that a screener—electronic or human—will read.

You cannot completely omit your chronological employment history from your functional résumé. This information will be of interest to potential employers after they have identified you as a prime employment candidate. So you should provide this information as the final section of the résumé.

Beyond the Trio: Tailoring
When applying for a very specific type of job opening or to a company you have researched thoroughly, you will have collected information that will help you tailor any of your three résumés to this company’s needs. A tailored résumé will give you a strong advantage over most candidates who have not submitted one.

Reading Today’s Chemist at Work, Chemical & Engineering News, and other trade magazines can help you identify employment opportunities. The news summaries in these magazines provide information concerning which companies are commercializing new products, building new plants, and opening new technology centers. Depending on your interests and qualifications, these news summaries can serve as announcements that the company may be in the market for someone with your skills and qualifications. For example, a company building a production line to manufacture a new class of polyethylene could be interested in hiring applications chemists to work with the new polymers to find end uses and to assist potential customers, as well as analytical chemists and chemical engineers to work in the plant. Technicians could be needed in both the plant lab and the applications lab. By the time you read the plant announcement, it is probably too late for the company to be interested in hiring additional process chemists.

Announcements of joint ventures also often indicate employment opportunities. Even an announcement of a voluntary staff reduction can indicate employment opportunities if more employees than anticipated opt for a voluntary severance package. As a result, the company may find itself understaffed. So submitting your résumé to such a firm a month or so after the severance package announcement can result in interview opportunities.

When writing your résumés, think like a weapons designer. What will make your résumé penetrate the “enemy line” of employers’ screening? Once that objective is achieved, you can show an employer in person that you actually belong with his or her platoon.