Resume Tips

Creating a Text Resume for E-mail or Online Submission

By the FutureCollegeGrads.com Staff

It seems like everyone has guidelines for sending your resume.  Some of us long for the days when a single paper resume was enough.  But technology has put an end to   that.  Cutting and pasting your existing paper resume into an email, online form or any site requesting an ASCII format isn’t the right way to solve the problem.

These types of resumes are increasing in popularity and very few people know how to format their resume to be easily read.  Just as with scannable and paper resumes, your chance of getting to the next stage in the process increase with how well your resume fits the needs of the company’s systems.  So here are some important tips to keep in mind when creating a resume for e-mail or online submission.

• Simplicity is Key- Fancy fonts, bolded text and graphic are impressive on paper and deadly in this format.  Most, if not all, of these resumes are going into some kind of database.  Those programs can’t read the types of text or graphics which make your paper resume so eye-catching and memorable.  The program will render your resume unreadable which equals useless. Use simple standard fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman.  Put everything in normal text.  Your resume is meant to impress and impressing these database programs means following their rules.
• Forget the Tab Key - Tabbing over is an easy way to align things on a paper resume.  Maybe you want your school and home addresses next to each other and use the tab key to line everything up, such as:

                    123 School St.                                                             456 Home St.

                    Campusville, NC  12345                                          Hometown, NY  01123

• When preparing the text version of your resume, forget the tab key exists – the database programs already have.  They skip over tabs and you’ll end up with all of your information running together like this disaster:

                      123 School St. 456 Home St.

                     Campusville, NC  12345Hometown, NY  01123

• Of course, you do this on the paper version to save space and keep it down to one page.  Don’t even worry about length on e-mail or online resumes.  Worry about how it looks. Your best bet is to keep everything aligned to the left of the page.  Start a new line with any new information.

• Creating Headings and Breaking it up Visually - Eventually, a human will look at the resume, so you want the breaks and headings to be clear.  To accomplish this without bold text and with everything aligned to the left, use all caps for you titles.  For example your main headings might be EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION.  Notice how the caps draw your eye in this paragraph.  They serve the same purpose on the resume.
•  Avoid W rapping Text - You do not want your text to wrap automatically in these formats.  The best way to do this is to keep each line under 72 characters.  It is a general standard just about every system follows.
•   What About Bullets? - A popular way to write a resume is to use bullet points.  It is a quick clean way to draw a recruiter’s attention to your strengths.  As you may have guessed you can’t use bullets in this format.  Sorry.  The trick here is the asterisk key.  Replace your bullets with *.  Not as pretty but serves your purpose.
• Saving the File - You’ll need to save you new resume as a text file.  Using the “Save As” option in your word processing program, choose either ASCII text or Text File.  Either will save your resume to the appropriate format.

Technology is a powerful tool for recruiters and they are using it more and more.  Make sure their technology is working for you.