Updating Your Resume For The Electronic Age

Contributed by Jay Schroyer

Unlike a beauty pageant, when it comes to hiring, the prettiest resume does not always win. With a slew of resumes pouring in for open job positions, employers are forced to turn to electronic means to help them sort through and identify the best candidates to interview. With this trend showing no sign of ending, it has become more important than ever to spend the most time on the content of your resume versus the actual appearance on paper.

There are two methods that are used most frequently. If you’ve e-mailed your resume, it can be used as part of a searchable database where employers search for specific terms or strings of terms. For example, if they were looking for a graphic designer, they may search terms like “Photoshop,” “Illustrator,” and “Adobe.” If you have submitted a resume in hard copy format, the resume will most likely be scanned into an electronic format using OCR software. OCR stands for optical character recognition and is used by numerous industries including banks and even libraries for archiving. As the scanner reads documents, the software attempts to recognize the characters of the text and reproduce them into an editable text file (Word is usually the common end file). This system is not without its problems, but it’s one of the fastest ways to transform information into a digital format.

With all of these things in mind, it may be time to reevaluate your resumes content and appearance before you apply for the next great job opening you come across. We’ll take a look at what you need to contemplate whether you’re submitting your resume electronically or in hard copy form.

Electronic
This is always going to be your best way of submitting your resume. E-mail is not only fast and efficient, but you don’t have to worry about printing out your resume on expensive paper and getting to the post office to mail it. With the click of a button, your resume is sailing over the phone lines and landing safely and cheaply in the employer’s Inbox. As always, make sure you double check your attachment before you hit the Send button. Use a common word processor program for your resume so that the employer will be able to open your attachment and read it. If you don’t, learn how to use Microsoft® Word, as there are very few offices that don’t have access to it.

When constructing your resume, try to keep these things in mind, as they will increase your odds of being selected for an interview—if the employer is using resume term searching software:

• Open your resume with a very term-specific statement about yourself. Let’s use the graphic designer example again. A good opener would read like: “Double-degreed graphic designer with seven years agency experience is well-versed in Adobe® Photoshop®, Illustrator®, In Design®, and GoLive® for interactive web-design applications.” What this opener did was give a single-serving sample of your education, years of experience, where you got your experience, what programs you’ve used, and the types of projects you’ve worked on. If a search was being done for the words “agency” and all of the software names, your resume would most certainly be one of the top hits.

• Another good tactic is to use synonyms of the same terms. If you used words like “hard-working,” “passionate,” and “creative” check out a thesaurus to be able to relist these words to produce more matches for your resume during a keyword search.

You don’t have to make your resume the plainest thing in the world. You still want it to attract attention, but by using very specific terms to describe your personality and traits, work experience, skills, and accomplishments, you will appear more often in a resume search.

Hard Copy
If you choose to go the old reliable route and submit a hard copy resume, there are a lot of considerations to be aware of in the electronic age. If this resume is going to be scanned and run through OCR software, you want to make it as easy as possible for the person who has to perform this action.

• Use bright white paper as the OCR software depends on being able to distinguish the type from the background. Don’t fold your resume. Mail it flat in a manila envelope to avoid wrinkles.

• Use a plain, easy-to-read font like the default Times New Roman or Arial and keep your font all one size to aid the OCR in recognizing your text.

• Avoid italics and underlining, as OCR will often read this incorrectly.

• Allow adequate white space between your sections.

• Avoid graphics, tables, boxes, and any other gradients in your resume as they will not reproduce well at all.

As always, check for spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors before sending your resume out. Reread it a few times out loud and even have a friend or colleague take a look at it. A second opinion before you send it is always better than after.

If you want to learn more about OCR software or even the search programs used by employers, you can look online for a computer software tutorial that will explain to you how these programs are used. By understanding their features and functions, it may be easier to tailor your resume to be more compatible with the software.

Although the methods of processing resumes have changed, many of the same rules still apply. By being in tune with the changes that are occurring in human resources departments all over the country, you can learn to tailor your resume to fall right in line with the new evaluation methods being used. Don’t fall behind the times. Get ahead of them and get ready for the interviews to come.

Adobe, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and GoLive are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the U.S. and/or other countries.Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

About the Author:
Jay Schroyer has worked in the client and customer service end of business for over five years in retail, advertising, and printing. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English writing and communication.

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