Personal Advancement
Build one that employers wantOnline resumesFor many job seekers, the Internet has become a valued tool, opening the door to a world of opportunities and delivering resumes at the click of a button. But don't be fooled. You may have bid farewell to costly resume paper and postage stamps, but creating an online resume can create headaches all its own. |
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 [ 2006-03-30 ] |
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If you've ever opened an e-mail message littered with confusing symbols or annoying line breaks, you'll understand one of the challenges created by technology. At the same time, scanners may now be reading your resume and determining if you land an interview.
These advances mean you've got to adapt if you're going to get the most out of your job search. Sharon Graham, president and principal consultant at Graham Management Group and executive director of Career Professionals of Canada, suggests you begin by considering the four main types of online resumes:
Word Document, which is e-mailed as an attachment
The recipient should be able to read it and scan it so that it can be transferred to an applicant tracking system (database).
PDF or Adobe Acrobat
This is an increasingly popular format that can't be edited. "It's almost like taking a picture of your resume," Graham says. "The benefit is that it's usually very pleasing to look at ... But the recruiter must have Adobe Acrobat in order to read it. More and more recruiters are asking for this format."
Pronounced "ask-ee," it stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and is cut and pasted into a job board box. "This is the most widely used format for posting on job boards or sending by e-mail," Graham says. "It's ugly, it's boring and has absolutely no formatting, but recruiters like it because they can put those characters in their database ... Once saved, you can cut and paste it into job boards, so it's a very worthwhile process."
HTML
"You need to be conversant in web programming to create an HTML resume, which is very innovative and usually has colours and links," Graham says. Ensure your page generates hits by including "meta tags" (which include information for search engines) and keywords.
Aside from formatting, the biggest difference between online and traditional resumes is the use of keywords -- phrases specific to a particular job. Companies are even using computerized scanning systems to read, process and track traditional resumes. Candidates with the right combination of keywords are considered top contenders.
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