Creating And E-mailing A Plain Text Resume

In our modern age, everyone seems to want things much faster than ever. This sometimes also holds true for prospective employers. Many prefer to receive resumes by e-mail, and their reasons for doing this can be varied. Some don't want mounds of paper resumes. Some find it easier to weed out the good resumes from the bad simply by e-mail.

Others find e-mail resumes faster. Still others prefer e-mail resumes because the job position is virtual, so prospective employees can come from anywhere in the world. So it's simply more practical to accept e-mail resumes.

Regardless of the reasons prospective employers have for accepting or requesting e-mail resumes, there is one thing almost every single prospective employer has in common. Very few will want e-mail resumes sent as attachments.

The reason for this is simple. No company wants to risk a computer virus or Trojan infection on their expensive technological equipment. Neither are they interested in seeing fancy HTML coded e-mails. In some cases, companies' e-mail software might not be able to read HTML e-mail. Besides, nifty HTML e-mails are usually larger files. Which means they take up unnecessary space in a prospective employer's inbox.

It's best to e-mail your resume as a plain text resume.

Which brings up the question, what is a plain text resume? Well, plain text resumes are also often referred to as ASCII resumes. Plain text resumes have no text formatting. That means no bolding, italicizing or underlining. Plain text resumes have no centering or special characters like the copyright or trademark symbols.

Therefore, in short, plain text resumes contain only typed text and nothing else. Usually every character in a plain text resume is evenly spaced and the same size. This includes blank spaces and punctuation like apostrophes.

When you prepare to email your plain text resume, there are a few things to keep in mind. As tempting as it is to simply paste your entire Word-processed resume into a plain text format, don't do it.

Simply pasting a pre-written resume into plain text format will cause all sorts of layout and formatting problems. Sentences might get squished together. Paragraph breaks could disappear. In addition, characters as simple as commas could appear as gibberish.

A plain text resume with layout and formatting problems, and poorly converted characters will present you in a poor light. And a poorly presented resume, whether print or plain text, is less likely to be read by a prospective employer.

To prevent this, you have two options. You can originally write your resume in plain text. Alternatively, you can re- type your original resume into plain text format. Just be sure that your plain text resume is less than 65 characters wide.

Some experts also suggest you include several words related to the industry you're trying to get a job in. These are called keywords. And these keywords make it easier for a prospective employer to find your resume if he or she is searching through an online database.

 

When typing your plain text resume, be sure to use capital letters to emphasize headings. In addition, be sure to left align your content. Also, don't use your tab key. Use five spaces instead.

A plain text resume can be created in your Notepad program. (To access it, click the Start button, then Programs, and then Notepad. Type away and save.

To convert a word processor document into a text file, select all the text. Change the text to 10 or 12 point Courier font. Adjust your margin to 4.5 or 5 inches. Then re-save as a text only file.

Creating and e-mailing a plain text resume takes only a few minutes to do, but the rewards of doing one correctly could pay off for many, many months.

 

 

 

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