How to Create a Great Electronic Resume

After creating the perfect resume, you then need todistribute it. You'll likely be sending some professionallyprinted hard copies, especially to "A list" companies ororganizations 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 electronicversion:

1. It must be searchable.

2. It must be in ASCII format.

Searchable:

Someone searching the Internet resume banks for the perfectcandidate (you) needs to be able to weed out all theunqualified candidates, which potentially number in the tensof thousands nowadays. Typically, they'll enter search termsintended to eliminate the vast majority of posted resumesand select the most promising. They do this much as onemight perform an Internet search on Google or another searchengine, by entering key word search terms

Their search might be limited to a certain geographicalarea, a certain skill set or qualification, or a certain jobdescription, among obvious search categories.

The geographical part is easy - your contact informationwill help someone looking for a software designer in SanFrancisco Bay area or a pretzel maker in Milwaukee find youif you are qualified and live in the right part of theworld.

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

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

Tip: Read through your completed resume and see if you can'tdescribe qualifications, degrees, or job titles in multiplealternative ways throughout the resume. This will increasethe chances you'll be found in an online search.

ASCII Format:

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

Unfortunately, when converted to electronic form, many ofthese word processing features are lost. Worse, what's leftover may bear no resemblance to the exquisite resume thatyou labored over to produce.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. You can prepare asimple text version in a text editor like Notepad or any ofthe 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 hardcarriage return, and tabs and justification effects withsimple spaces.

Another solution is to use a program specifically designedfor writing resumes like WinWay Resume Express. (See the "DoIt Yourself Resumes" page at www.Impressive-Resumes.com tolearn more about this inexpensive handy program.) Itfeatures an easy way to transform your resume into asearchable electronic version with very little effort afteryou've created the word processing formatted version.

No matter which method you use, be sure you've taken thesesimple preparations for electronic distribution before youhit "send." This will greatly increase the chances that yourresume will reach its intended audience.

Copyright 2005 by Vincent Czaplyski, all rights reserved.

You may republish this article in its entirety, as long asyou include the complete signature file above withoutmodification.

Copywriter and consultant Vincent Czaplyski is founder ofhttp://www.impressive-resumes.com, your online source forprofessionally written "industrial strength" resumes andcover letters guaranteed to land you an interview.