E-mail Your Resume

Many employers require potential job candidates to submit their resumes via e-mail as ASCII text only. This page will introduce you to the process of submitting your resume in this way.

What is ASCII text only? ASCII text only is the simple universal filetype used by Windows-based Microsoft Notepad and Macintosh's SimpleText editor.

Here's how to do it:

Open your word processor program (i.e. Microsoft Word) and set the margins to 6.5 inches of displayed text. Then open your resume file in the word processor. Select all the text and change it to Courier 12. Save as "Text only with Line Breaks."

Open the file in Notepad (or any comparable text editor). Look over your resume in Notepad. If you used bullets, underlining or other special characters in the original, Notepad will replace these with an error symbol. These may be replaced by any symbol on the keyboard; however, there are some logic replacements. Bullets, for example, are usually replaced with an asterisk or a hyphen.

If the text runs off the visible page, use Notepad's Word Wrap feature, which automatically returns the surplus lines of text.

Next, Copy and Paste the text into the body of an e-mail message. You may want to insert a short cover page note above the resume in the e-mail message. This can be done by the same process as described above or you can type it directly in the e-mail.

Finally, before sending the resume to your potential employer, you may want to test the e-mail by sending it to yourself and a friend with a different e-mail program.

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