How Should I Submit My Resume Online

Article on frequently asked resume question "How Should I Submit My Resume Online"

In the era where everything has gone digital, and we are all-or most of us-spending most of our time on the Internet as a preferred means of communication-especially in business-how you apply for an open job position will also be necessarily affected. How? Consider the career industry-you are presenting who you are and what you can offer a company of your choosing with your educational and career experience-through a formal written presentation. This is, of course, your resume. While it was once ok to search for jobs online and perhaps send a note of interest or thanks by email regarding a job; it is now, most often, preferred that you apply by this means as well. This brings us to our main topic: how should you submit your resume online?

Ever consider that not just what you put forth in a resume-as far as format and content-but also, how you send it is significant in the reviewing process for prospective employers? Most people haven’t; but sending resumes through email is just not as simple as sending them through standard mail delivery. This is due to a variety of reasons, with the most important of these being in what applications and software different companies use for their email and computer needs; and how this might differentiate with what you use. So, you may create a very professional and eloquent resume with just the right experience and presentation that a prospective employer is looking for; but if you send it without heeding a few simple rules of email formatting etiquette; all of that content and format will be lost as unopenable mail or mail that cannot read the attachment correctly and inserts various numbers and letters into your text. With these simple tips, you should be able to send off a resume that is well received, accessible, and easy to review-and thus, better your chances are scoring the position.

1. PDF: The final product should always be in a format that an employer can read or probably uses most often. There are few companies out there who do not use or aren’t expected to use pdf (portable document format) for their internal and external documents. This said, once you have polished your resume as best as possible-the best format that you can choose that will be universally understood and accessible, is the pdf.

2. Fonts/Bolding: Though it may seem that the more bolding and font styles you use; the easier it will be for an employer to see the more significant information over the less-it isn’t. Aside from this kind of jumbled formatting being distracting for someone trying to read the content of your resume; it also makes the ability to convert your document from your program to the employer’s software program much more difficult. This is not to say that you cannot use fonts or bolding, but try to centralize it only to headings and sections.

3. Bullets: Though it is helpful and common for a person creating a resume to want to use bullet points to define different responsibilities or achievements in their career history-again, use one kind of bullet point for the entire document; and use them sparingly. This will allow almost any kind of software to be able to read your resume so that your prospective employer can too.

4. Indenting: Another area that an applicant should be careful of when developing a resume that will be easily read, is that of indenting. Though many different templates have various areas that call for indenting-make sure again, that you make the indenting only when necessarily-such as for the main categories of education, experience, etc and that of the bullet points underneath it. Too much indenting will make your resume look like some weird printer test print and will distract your employer from reviewing it-especially once they have put the document into their own software or scanning system.