The Scannable Resume
AKA - The Electronic Resume
or The ASCII Resume
What is a scannable
resume? A scannable resume is a resume that is a plain text file designed
to be read by optical scanners. Many organizations now use scanners or computer
based text readers that take resume data and place it into a database for
later retrieval. A scannable resume may never be seen by a human eye so it's
important that you know about them.
The most important
thing to know about a scannable resume is that the only way someone can find
you in the database and retrieve your information is through the use of keywords.
Keywords are descriptive words that describe the type of work you do. Keywords
include the jargon, acronyms, or other special words that relate to your profession.
Make sure your scannable resume has all the important keyword that relate
to your profession. You can include your keywords in the content of your resume
or you can create a heading on your resume to list your keywords in sequence.
If you want to learn
more about keywords, here is a great book that lists many helpful key words
for different professions. Click on the image to learn more or do order.
Ok, so how do you
create a scannable resume? It's actually very easy. What I recommend is that
you start with a standard, visual type of resume and convert it to a scannable
type. This way you will have both types of resume styles and will be ready
for any method of sending your resume. Here are the simple steps for converting
your standard resume to a scannable resume.
1. Open your standard
resume in MS Word, or whatever word-processing software you use.
2. Select the "Save As" option in the "File" menu.
3. After you open the "Save As" menu, you'll see a drop down menu
on the bottom of the window that opened where you can select the file type
for what you want to save. Select the "Text File txt" option and
save your file as a text file.
4. After saving, you want to open this text file to make sure that it still
looks OK because saving your resume as a text file removes all the formatting
and special characters. You can open the text version of your resume with
any standard text editor like Wordpad or Notepad.
5. Open and view your text file to correct any formatting problems or errors
then save your file again.
6. Congratulate yourself because you now have a scannable version of your
resume!
You will often send
a scannable resume as a file or post it on a web site but if you have to print
your scannable resume, here are some guidelines.
-Use white 8 1/2 x 11 paper
-Do not fold the paper or
use staples
-Use standard fonts like
Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier
-Use a font size between 11 and 12 points
-Do not use italics, underline, shadows, bold and dashes, horizontal or vertical
lines
-Make sure your personal information is on each page
-If you list more than one phone number, put each on its own line and use
spaces between numbers, not dashes
That's all there is
to creating a scannable resume and you will now have two versions of your
resume and are ready to send your resume by any method a potential employer
might request that you use.
