Careers & Employment Information

How to Create a Great Electronic Resume


After creating the perfect resume, you then need to distribute it. You'll likely be sending some professionally printed hard copies, especially to "A list" companies or organizations you've set your sights on. But just as likely, you'll be distributing other copies electronically.

Presuming you've written a great resume to begin with, here's what you really need to know about your electronic version:

1. It must be searchable.

2. It must be in ASCII format.

Searchable:

Someone searching the Internet resume banks for the perfect candidate (you) needs to be able to weed out all the unqualified candidates, which potentially number in the tens of thousands nowadays. Typically, they'll enter search terms intended to eliminate the vast majority of posted resumes and select the most promising. They do this much as one might perform an Internet search on Google or another search engine, by entering key word search terms

Their search might be limited to a certain geographical area, a certain skill set or qualification, or a certain job description, among obvious search categories.

The geographical part is easy - your contact information will help someone looking for a software designer in San Francisco Bay area or a pretzel maker in Milwaukee find you if you are qualified and live in the right part of the world.

However, if you have technical qualifications that can be searched in different ways - "Bachelor of Science" and "B.Sc." for example, your resume should use both variants so that a search engine finds you either way.

And if you possess job experience that's highly relevant to the job in question, be sure to describe it in the most common ways that it would likely be searched on.

Tip: Read through your completed resume and see if you can't describe qualifications, degrees, or job titles in multiple alternative ways throughout the resume. This will increase the chances you'll be found in an online search.

ASCII Format:

Your professionally laid out and formatted paper resume may end up looking like gibberish if simply transformed into an electronic copy. Programs like Word allow you to format nice looking documents with features such as tabs, bullets, centering, bold, italic and other word processing niceties.

Unfortunately, when converted to electronic form, many of these word processing features are lost. Worse, what's left over may bear no resemblance to the exquisite resume that you labored over to produce.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. You can prepare a simple text version in a text editor like Notepad or any of the dozens of other text editors out there. In this case, you'll replace many of these text effects. For example, you'll replace bullets with asterisks, word wrap with a hard carriage return, and tabs and justification effects with simple spaces.

Another solution is to use a program specifically designed for writing resumes like WinWay Resume Express. (See the "Do It Yourself Resumes" page at www.Impressive-Resumes.com to learn more about this inexpensive handy program.) It features an easy way to transform your resume into a searchable electronic version with very little effort after you've created the word processing formatted version.

No matter which method you use, be sure you've taken these simple preparations for electronic distribution before you hit "send." This will greatly increase the chances that your resume will reach its intended audience.

Copyright 2005 by Vincent Czaplyski, all rights reserved.

You may republish this article in its entirety, as long as you include the complete signature file above without modification.

Copywriter and consultant Vincent Czaplyski is founder of http://www.impressive-resumes.com, your online source for professionally written "industrial strength" resumes and cover letters guaranteed to land you an interview.


MORE RESOURCES:
Google

Report: Alabama's mortgage employment stable
Bizjournals.com, NC - 9 hours ago
Government data indicate that mortgage employment has slipped to 357800 as of May 31 from 360700 on March 31. However, in Alabama, there has been no report ...


US IT Employment Keeps Rising, Up 10% From Last Year
InformationWeek, NY - 12 hours ago
Compared with the second quarter a year ago, US IT employment's up 10%. US IT employment's at an all-time high, having passed the 4 million job mark for the ...
Is Your Company Still Hiring IT Workers? InformationWeek
all 4 news articles


Employment index down again in June
Kansas City Star, MO - Jul 7, 2008
The Conference Board?s Employment Trends Index fell again in June, as it has for the last 12 months. The business research organization said the data signal ...
US employment trends report predicts continuing job losses in ... Truck News
Index points to continued job losses Bizjournals.com
The Conference Board Employment Trends Index(TM) Declines ... Earthtimes (press release)
ThomasNet Industrial News Room (press release) - CNNMoney.com
all 40 news articles


Aljazeera.net

ECONOMIC BEAT
Barron's - Jul 7, 2008
Nonfarm payroll employment shows the same slow leak. Payroll employment fell 62000 in June, making this the 6th month in a row of job losses. ...
Business to "hoard" labour: economists The Age
Jobs market softening Sydney Morning Herald
Select Interface Language: Greek News
Reed Construction Data - Providence Business News
all 537 news articles


Professors disciplined for double employment
Minneapolis Star Tribune, MN - 1 hour ago
Georgia Tech contends the husband and wife took jobs at the U while continuing their jobs at the Atlanta school. By JEFF SHELMAN, Star Tribune Two ...


Economic news mixed in Metro Denver EDC report
Bizjournals.com, NC - 6 hours ago
The council's data for May, compiled by Development Research Partners Inc. of Littleton, show that employment has continued to grow, and that impact of ...


ADMIN, IS, MAINTENANCE POSITIONS
Seattle Times, United States - 57 minutes ago
New employees have potential of accruing up to 6.8 weeks in 1st year of employment. Detailed Job Announcements for each position are available at ...


Construction, manufacturing lead employment downturn
SmartBrief, DC - 10 hours ago
Manufacturing and construction companies continued to lay off workers at a high pace last month, according to figures from the US Department of Labor. ...


Australian Leading Employment Indicator Falls In July
FXstreet.com The Foreign Exchange Market, Spain - 6 minutes ago
CANBERRA (Dow Jones)--Australia's Department of Employment said Wednesday that its leading indicator of employment fell to a negative 0.060 in July from a ...


Small Business Data Shows Mixed Bag
Washington Post, United States - 13 hours ago
Large businesses with more than 500 employees saw employment decline by 18000 workers in May, while medium-sized businesses with between 50 and 499 workers ...
Inflation Top Concern of Small Business Owners in June Idaho Examiner
all 52 news articles

Employment - Google News

home | site map
© 2006