The Resume.Com Guide to Writing Unbeatable Resumes (16 page)

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Process Improvement

The Internet has changed almost every facet of the job application process, creating a fundamental shift that affects not only the way job applicants research, apply for, and obtain new positions but also the way resumes are written. The Internet resume has had a profound impact on the job application process because of its defining characteristic: the lightning-quick transfer of information. This has created an ideal means for contacting hirers; unlike using a fax or mailing a resume, it’s a relatively cheap and paper-free way to apply for a position.

There are drawbacks to using the Internet to apply for a job, however. The ease with which information is exchanged on the Internet has created a deluge of available candidates for almost
any
position listed online, and you therefore can expect to compete with hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants for any job. Some career-services companies even offer automated resume-submission tools that immediately submit your resume when a hirer first posts a job online. Hirers usually are inundated with candidates, and as the applicant pool increases, the cream does not always rise to the top. As we’ve discussed in the last chapter, employers have begun to use powerful software to eliminate candidates on the basis of predetermined criteria.

This chapter will walk you through the steps you should use to apply for a position by using e-mail and the Internet and what electronic pitfalls you’ll have to avoid along the way. To ensure that your resume is not eliminated with those of the herd of applicants who aren’t applying for a
specific
position so much as for
any
position, you should adhere closely to the following ground rules.

In the age of job boards, resume distribution, and e-mail applications, the first step in applying for a position online is to adhere to the golden rule: Don’t submit a resume as an attachment to an e-mail. Although every e-mail program has this option, the smartest way to apply for a job online is to cut and paste the resume into the body of the e-mail, using an ASCII conversion, which in lay terms is an electronic, text-only version of a resume.

Attaching a resume is usually a mistake because many companies have made it standard practice to delete e-mails containing attachments automatically, as it not only takes time to open an attachment, but, more important, an e-mail with an attachment may contain a virus.

Viruses can be hidden in attachments and, if downloaded, can wreak havoc and destroy data. You don’t want to be grouped into the same category as Bill from accounting, who was fired last week and thinks that sending his former company a nasty virus is a great way to say thank you to the department. Remember, a potential employer can’t tell you from Bill, and many companies automatically delete job applicants’ e-mails if they contain attachments.

The threat of viruses, real or perceived, has resulted in programs that automatically delete attachments, and many hirers would rather delete a file than risk a virus. Cutting and pasting an ASCII version of your resume into an e-mail is a smarter way to apply.

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and it’s the industry standard for e-mailing or posting a resume online. As a result of its safety and plain-text readability, the ASCII (pronounced “askee”) resume avoids the e-mail deletion problem when properly cut and pasted into the body of an e-mail. It also avoids the second biggest problem that job seekers encounter when applying for a position online: translation problems that can occur when a document is saved on one computer and opened on another.

Although most resumes created in a word-processing program use style traits to make a document aesthetically pleasing (such as bullets and bolding), not every e-mail program, operating system, and Web browser can read these documents without translation problems occurring.

An ASCII resume can be read by any of these systems and programs and ensures that a hirer is not reading an incomprehensible document. Although the ASCII format is not as pleasing to the eye as a nicely formatted Word document, what it loses in attractiveness, it makes up for in practicality. Whether an employer is using a Mac or a personal computer (PC), your resume will be read. You can create your own ASCII conversion by following a few simple steps.

Then, choose Text Only with Line Breaks and save.

Next close the document and then open up the text version. Your new document will have lost most of its formatting and will look something like this:

The first step in correctly formatting the ASCII version is to change all the bullets, which probably will have turned into question marks (?), into asterisks (*). You can do this by going to Edit and selecting the Find option. Then select Replace in this window. Then enter the question mark (?) to be replaced by the asterisk (the asterisk is shift-8) and choose Replace All.