How to Convert Your Resume to ASCII

The traditional print resume still has a use, but submitting a plain-text (ASCII) version is the fastest way to get your resume in front of an interviewer. It's a not-so-pretty resume you submit on the Internet, through job sites and email. Even though it's not very pretty, today's technical employers prefer it, because all computers universally recognize ASCII.

There are two ways to convert your word-processed resume to ASCII. One is to simply copy and paste it straight from Microsoft Word into a plain-text editor (like Windows® Notepad), the body of an email, or an online resume form at a job site. Doing it this way automatically converts your resume to ASCII in most cases, but you may lose some formatting in the process. That's because ASCII doesn't support fancy formatting such as bullets (•), bold, Italic and underscoring. It also doesn't support tabs, centering and special characters, like the é in résumé. That means you may have to reformat your resume each time you copy and paste it. Too much work!

A better way is to create an ASCII version in the first place and store it on your computer, so you can conveniently and repeatedly copy and paste it, without reformatting each time.