The Cyber-Savvy Resume Primer for Non-Technical Professionals

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By: Murray A. Mann and Rose Mary Bombela-Tobias

According to Pat Criscito, president and founder of ProType Ltd., almost all Fortune 1000 companies, nearly half of all mid-sized companies and most recruitment service providers for smaller employers now use information technology to access and process your resume. The cyber-savvy resume is an effective electronic version of your traditional resume that can help you maintain a competitive advantage in the employment marketplace. The cyber-savvy resume may take on of the following forms:

SCANNABLE

  • Your paper resume (or fax) arrives at a company or search firm, is scanned using Optical Character Recognition and stored in a computer database.
  • A keyword search is conducted to match candidates to the requirements of an opening. Keywords or phrases describe your skills, experience, education and cultural competencies.
  • Your resume can be difficult to scan if it contains funky fonts, compressed letters, underlining, hollow bullets, columns, short vertical lines, etc. You do not have to sacrifice design attributes.

E-MAILABLE

  • Your once visually appealing resume is converted to an “ugly” generic text file for posting on the Internet, Bulletin Boards and On-line Services.
  • Your resume is universally readable by any computer system, directly entered into a resume database, and can be distributed in seconds to one or thousands of websites.
  • Susan Britton Whitcomb, author of Resume Magic, suggests that anyone familiar with word processing software can easily convert their resume for successful e-mailing.

MULTIMEDIA

  • A resume for your home page on the Internet using photographs, graphics, animation, sound, color and/or movement.
  • This format can be an effective showcase for technical fields and the arts. Recruiters for most other careers do not surf the Net looking for personal websites.
  • You must know HTML, or have software that will convert word processing files.

BLACKBERRY

  • HTML/Plain text or just a minimized version of the original resume.

POSTING YOUR RESUME OR HOW NOT TO BECOME “LOST IN CYBERSPACE”

Your cyber-savvy resume can be submitted to a company e-mail address, a headhunter website, an Internet resume database or an on-line resume forwarding service. It is best to paste your resume into your e-mail message. This will protect the integrity of your information, save the receiver the hassle of downloading / opening and avoid the reader’s fear of viruses. It is useful to have an e-mail return Address. You can obtain a free personal e-mal address from several Internet providers.

Your first on-line resume should be e-mailed to yourself so you may review the final version as seen by the recipient. A little research can help you determine how and where to post your cyber-savvy Resume. Most companies have websites listing employment opportunities and position specific e-mail addresses.

BUENA SUERTE

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