Electronic Resumes
The Internet has changed how employers manage and identify qualified applicants. Before you send a resume to a potential employer, you should discover what the employer does with your resume once it is received. Some employers will scan your resume into a computer database and then destroy your paper resume. Your resume will then be held in the employer?s candidate database and a computer program will be used to electronically search the database to locate the resumes of the best candidates. This type of employer should receive a scannable resume.
Some employers will have a staff member read your resume, ascertain your critical skills and experience, and then input only those essential elements into a computer database. This type of employer should receive a scannable resume with a keyword section which will then focus the employer on your skills that you believe are important.
Other employers show a preference to applicants who complete online applications that are on the employer?s web site or for applicants who send their resumes via e-mail to a designated recruiter. Online applications and email resumes differ significantly in content and layout from traditional resumes. Candidates who use these methods may be a step ahead of candidates who use mail services to deliver a traditional resume. But, job candidates who use technology to get their resumes into the hands of employers must be sure that they make the necessary adjustments to their job search process and correspondence. The next sections will describe how to effectively prepare job correspondence, searches and resumes using the most common electronic methods: online applications, scannable resumes, and email resumes.
Online applications provide the most secure transmission to the employer?s candidate database. Like a traditional resume, online applications must be free of grammatical and spelling errors. It is advisable for another person to review your online application before you submit it to the employer?s homepage. Another consideration when using online applications is how to make your application distinctive from the many other applications filed online. To draw attention to your application, special skills and qualities that match the employer?s needs must be located in the content of the online application. You can quickly customize your online application by having available a copy of your traditional resume, your self assessment lists of traits, skills, and achievements, and documentation of occupational research on the employer. These lists will quickly provide ideas for nouns and phrases to include in your online application. On average, your online application should have 20 keywords or phrases that match the employer?s needs and preferences.
This type of resume is used when an employer uses technology to scan paper resumes into a database for retention and further screening. Scannable resumes differ from traditional resumes in both content and format because of the limitations of technology in reading and storing a resume. The hardware and software used in scanning can "read" your resume when the print is distinct and background color is absent. For these reasons, you must use laser quality print for your scannable resume and white or near white resume paper. Blue, gray, or tan paper is not advised. The next step in succeeding with a scanning system is to change the linguistics of your resume. Scannable resumes are retrieved from an employer?s job bank by the use of a search. The search process uses nouns or phrases as keywords for the software to locate the best resumes in the database. Also follow these points when developing your scannable resume:
1. Use a font in the 10-14 point range. Use common fonts like Courier New, Times Roman or Palatino.
2. No horizontal or vertical lines.
3. No tables or columns.
4. Avoid boldface, italicizing, script, shadowing, graphics, borders, and underlines.
5. Place the name on the first line after your 1 inch margin and begin the street address on line two.
6. Use caps to highlight major headings such as OBJECTIVE and use the * to highlight important lines.
7. Develop a keywords section to follow your address.
8. Don?t fold or staple
9. Don?t use abbreviations or acronyms unless they are highly common in the industry.
Email resumes are similar to scannable resumes in layout and content, but they have their differences. The most significant is that email resumes use the Internet for transmission (as opposed to snail mail). Email resumes are very efficient at avoiding the resume traps often found with snail mail. An email resume can be sent to the decision-maker if you know the person?s email address thereby avoiding a pre-screener who limits the number of resumes reviewed by the decision maker. Further, an email resume can arrive at a decision-maker?s computer within minutes of a request for your resume. That is more effective than a few days to a week that a decision-maker could wait for a resume using snail mail!
The draw back of email resumes is that the Internet has limitations in transmitting your resume. Like scanning systems that read scannable resumes, the Internet has difficulty transmitting many formatting codes, fonts, and graphics. Another limitation of email resumes is that the receiver may not have compatible software for opening up your email resume if it is sent as an attachment. These limitations are easily overcome and you can quickly begin sending email resumes to your targeted employers by following these simple pointers:
1. Before typing the content of your email resume, set the margins in your page format so that there are no more than 70 characters are on one line. This usually results in about a 2 inch right margin.
2. Left justify your text and continue with a 12 point sans serif font like Times Roman or Helvetica.
3. Put your name on the first line and your address on the second and third lines. Phone numbers would be on the fourth line and email address on the fifth line.
4. Use the space bar to create white space between text on a line. DO NOT use tabs to indent information.
5. Always put a line or two after each job description.
6. Make sure that the asterisk which highlights a line of text is followed by 1?2 spaces before beginning text.
7. Use keywords and nouns in the content of your resume.
8. Avoid slashes like "design/develop."
9. Prepare a cover letter for email using similar rules as the email resume.
10. Save both your cover letter and email resume as a text only (plain text) file or in ASCII format. These choices are found in the ?Save As Type? field in the ?Save As? dialogue box.
Converting a Resume to ASCII format for E-mail Transmission
Step 1 - Create and save traditional resume using MS Word as a word document.
Step 2 - Open the resume using MS Word. Eliminate bold, underline, centering, italicizing, bullets, indents, or special formatting commands. Replace bullets with asterisks or dashes. Select a non-proportional, sans serif font in 12 point size.
Step 3 - Use the "save as" command to save the file under a different name and save as a "text only" file.
Step 4 - Put blank line between headings and paragraphs to make skill headings distinguishable.
Step 5 - Close the email resume file until you are ready to test its? transmission abilities. It automatically saves the file as a .txt (text file). When you are ready to test your email resume or to send it, open the file and block highlight all the text. Using your edit function, copy the email resume file.
Step 6 - To e-mail, open a new e-mail message. Put cursor in the body of the e-mail message and use the "paste" function in the edit key on your toolbar to bring in the copied email resume file. Check again to make sure that extra spaces, word wrapping, spelling, formatting, etc. are not problems. Put 10 xxxxxxxxxxx between your email cover letter and the email resume. Double check the email address for accuracy and then send.
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