Make Your Resume Internet Savvy
9/29/2003

By Julie Young

In today's increasingly competitive job market, be sure to give yourself every possible edge, especially when you email your resume to a prospective employer.

Keep in mind that creating an e-resume will allow more people to look at your information, for good or for bad. On the upside, it allows prospective employers to forward your resume quickly and easily to other people within the company. In addition, you can post your e-resume to online job banks like monster.com, and hotjobs.com.

For that reason, you should create several versions of your word processing document in order to canvass your market: a Rich Text Format (RTF) file, an ASCII file, and if you have web space, an online version.

Rich Text Format
Should you need to email your resume to an employer as an attachment, create it as an RTF file. RTF is a way to save your word processing file so that it is in "simple format." Simple format means that it still includes options like bold and italics, but can be read by many systems.

To use Microsoft Word to convert your document to RTF, go to "Save As" and change the file type to Rich Text Format. It's a simple, but important step to ensure that more people will be able to view your resume correctly.

ASCII/Plain Text
Human Resource professionals often request ASCII (plain text) resumes when they plan to run them through a computer program that sorts them based on keywords. ASCII does not support bold, italics, or underline formatting.

Use the ASCII format when attachments aren't accepted and you need to copy and paste your resume into the body of an email. You may have noticed that when you copy something from your word processor into an email, it may look fine to you, but not to the recipient. Your recipient may find funny line breaks and weird symbols in the email. Formatting your resume in ASCII will prevent this job search faux pas.

In order to convert your Word file to ASCII, open your document in Word and change the font to Courier New, 12 point. Then change the left and right margins to one inch. Save the file as "Text Only with Line Breaks" (.txt extension).

Next, open your document (.txt) in NotePad or WordPad. Remove bullets and insert dashes or asterisks instead, and delete any odd symbols like accent marks that don't belong. Make any other changes, and then try it out by sending it to yourself or friends with different email programs.

Web Format
If you have personal web space available, consider posting your resume online. Online resumes are handy because the employer can look at it any time, day or night. Also, if you've previously done any online work, it's easier to link to clips than to print them out.

When you create your online resume, include whatever frills you'd like to make it more visually pleasing. However, keep all of your information on a single web page. For example, don't link off to another page that lists your education. Designs like that will probably discourage the recruiter from delving further into your site. For ease of use, make sure that the resume prints out cleanly and on one or two pages.

By creating several different file types for your resume, you will have greater success in reaching the widest audience. Knowing how to prepare RTF files, ASCII files, and online resumes can greatly reduce the problems and uncertainty associated with email resumes and online job banks.


SOURCES:
"Building e-resumes." Sunoasis.com. www.sunoasis.com/eresume.html. Accessed 22 Sept. 2003.

"e-resumes: Take a Walk on the Virtual Side." UWC Graduate Gateway University of Central Florida. 13 Feb. 2003. www.uwc.ucf.edu/Grad%20Gateway/beyond_gradschool/e_resumes.htm.

Issacs, Kim. "How to Email a Text Resume." Monster.com. resume.monster.com/articles/email/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2003.

Smith, Rebecca. "eRésumés 101: Choosing Your Best Electronic Résumé Format." www.eresumes.com. 17 Sept. 2002.

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