The ABCs of ASCII/Plain Text Resumes |
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Confusedby all the different formats and vernacular when it comes to emailing or postingresumes online? First and foremost, you‘ll need to know about ASCII, which standsfor American Standard Code of Information Interchange. The acronym is pronouncedask-ee (as opposed to ask-two or ask-eye). ASCII uses a character set that canbe interpreted by virtually every operating system and guarantees file compatibility.
Theterm most often associated with ASCII is "text." When employers askfor your "text resume," they want an ASCII resume. Synonyms for a textresume include plain text, simple text, text only, and text with line breaks.The primary feature of a textresume is its "plain-ness," or lack of formatting enhancements. In otherwords, no bold, italic, fancy bullets, special fonts, indented text, and the like.Conversely, when employersask for a "formatted resume," they want a word-processed document, typicallyin MS Word format.
Differentjob-search circumstances will require different file formats. If you are pastingthe resume into the body of an email message, the "Text Only withLine Breaks" format is best. If you are pasting the resume into e-forms oronline "resume builders" commonly found at career Web sites, a "TextOnly" file format (without line breaks) will provide better results.
Howto Create a
Text Resume to Send in E-Mail
Tocreate an ASCII resume with line breaks for pasting into an email message, followthese directions:
Beforeemailing the resume, it‘s a good idea to check and see how it holds up. Open Notepad,then copy and paste the file into an email message. To get an idea of how theresume will look once delivered, send the file to both yourself and a friend whouses a different email program.
Howto Create a Text
Resume to Paste into an E-Form
Tocopy and paste your resume into online e-forms at job-search sites or companyWeb sites, it‘s best to use a Text Only resume (without line breaks).To create this format, follow the instructions below:
Howto Send a Text Resume by E-Mail
There are several methods to accomplish this task. Here‘s oneway:
Atfirst, you may feel that there is a lot to remember. Take heart! After practicinga few times, you‘ll be able to zip a resume off to an employer in less than 30seconds.
For additionaldetails and tips on converting your resume to ASCII Text and cleaning it up formaximum readability, see eResumes:Everything You Need To Know!
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