Make your CV e-friendly

[stanley clement]

It is important to provide a short, clear and concise electronic C.V.!
Some scanning systems and databases stop reading C.V.s after a certain
number of lines, often after about one and a half pages, so be sure
that your most important information appears early in your C.V.

You can easily take your existing C.V. and reformat it for electronic
submission. Here are some quick guidelines to do so:

1. Open your standard C.V. file on your computer and select the Save
As command on your toolbar, usually located under the file menu.
Select Text Only, Plain Text or ASCII as the type.

2. Close the file and then reopen it to make sure you are working from
the new text-only version. You'll see that most graphic elements such
as lines, images and bullet point symbols have now been eliminated.
But if they haven't, go ahead and delete them. You may use equal signs
in place of lines or borders and replace bullet points with plus
symbols(+), asterisks (*) or hyphens (-).

3. Limit your margins to no more than 65 characters wide.

4. Use an easy-to-scan sans-serif type font, such as Courier, Arial or
Helvetica.

5. Eliminate bold, italics and underlining if any remain after saving
as text-only.

6. Introduce major sections with all words in capital letters, rather
than in bold, italics or underlining.

7. Keep all text aligned to the left.

8. Instead of using bullets, use a standard keyboard character, such
as an asterisk.

9. Instead of using the Tab key or paragraph indents, use the space
key to indent.

10. When done, click Save or OK. Then reopen the file to see how it
looks. Make any additional format changes as needed.

Now test your electronic C.V. by e-mailing it to a friend who uses a
different Internet Service Provider. For example, if you use BT, send
it to a friend who uses NTL or Hotmail. Also try sending it to someone
who works in a large company to see how it transmits via their I.T.
system as the body of the e-mail rather than sending it as an
attachment. That way, they will be able to tell you how it looks when
it shows up in their e-mail system and whether it is legible. After
getting their feedback, make any adjustments necessary to fix it.