Reverse-chronological lists your jobs newest first. It's the format every parser handles cleanly, every recruiter scans fastest, and every hiring manager expects. Unless you have a specific reason not to, use it.
Reverse-chronological works for engineers, designers, PMs, marketers, sellers, executives, teachers, nurses, lawyers, consultants, and academics with industry-track CVs. That covers about 90% of professional applicants.
Exceptions where you might pick differently: deep career changes (some functional framing helps), pure project-based consulting work without a stable employer (combination format), and academic CVs in research-track positions (academic CV format, with publications dominant).
Top: Name, contact line, optional Summary. Middle: Experience, most recent role first, with 3 to 6 quantified bullets per role. Below experience: Skills (grouped by category), then Education, then optional sections (Projects, Publications, Certifications).
Dates go on every role: MM/YYYY to MM/YYYY. Gaps over 6 months should be acknowledged briefly (sabbatical, caregiving, full-time study) rather than left unexplained.
Reverse-chronological resume: lists your work history newest first. Standard format for 90% of applicants. Parser-friendly, recruiter-expected, hiring-manager scannable.
Deep career changes where the most recent role is in a different field. Pure project-based consulting without stable employers. Academic research-track positions where publications dominate the CV.
Acknowledge them briefly. 'On sabbatical from 2024-Q3 to 2025-Q1 to complete Lambda School full-stack program' is stronger than an unexplained gap. Honesty plus context beats hiding the gap.
Below Experience for most roles (marketing, sales, PM, executive). Above Experience for engineering, data, and design CVs where the stack is the lead screening filter.
15 years for most professionals. Anything older can be summarised as 'Earlier experience available on request' or rolled into a one-line note. Academic CVs are the exception; they go back to the PhD.
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