ASCII Resume Format: Embracing the Clear and Simple

Judging from the sound of it, ASCII may be some complicated doohickey that companies ask applicants to operate so that 95% of them will be eliminated presto.

Alright, enough of the scary thing. ASCII (As-kee) is actually a plain text language in which everything you write is stripped of its formatting and embellishments. In simple words, it is writing in a computer's notepad. You can't choose a font, use bullets, align a paragraph, and not even italicize a word. The major advantage of this style is that employers will not get distracted by the diversity of the overall layout and can make more unbiased choice towards the job candidates. And most of all, this ASCII resume format enables some legendary computer software to scan for keywords in your application paper.

Online applicants may feel stuck clueless and hampered by this askee thing forever, not knowing that the mechanism is plain simple: write your resume in notepad. Moreover, if you want to be one of the strongest contenders in the electronic job market, you may want to learn more tips in mastering the art of online application:

1. This is not Microsoft Word

First of all, it is advised that you write your document first in MS Word. However, don't use any button from the ribbon above because chances are, the style will only be eliminated. Practices starting a paragraph without punching in the tab. Tabs don't actually work once you paste them on Notepad. You may not be able to utilize several Word features in for your application. However, you can maximize the use of built-in thesaurus (a.k.a. right click synonyms) to improve your diction and generate a compelling content despite the very simple style.

2. Alternative to bullets

Since you cannot use bullets, dividers, and borders, here you can take advantage of some symbols like '+', '_' and '*'. They keep your copy coherent and organized as much as borders can do. You will never run out of resources once you know your keyboard well. So don't fret for not having to use your favorite diamond bullets and be thankful instead that you can still utilize some overlooked characters.

3. On formatting

One rule: never use anything that is not in your keyboard. Since the aim of ASCII resume format is to simplify the layout to make people concentrate more on the content, it is wise to invest more on keeping an engaging and impressing substance in your self-advertisement. Don't worry much about the presentation if it's very plain. If you badly needed to center or indent the word, use a space bar. All caps are also good for emphasis, but only use them for highly important details like your name and the name of the section.

4. The Magic of Word Wrap

Now you finish your e-resume and think it's already perfected, so you copy-pasted to Notepad. But to your surprise, the layout appeared to be too broad for the document. What to do? Go to Format menu and click Word Wrap. Set the margins at 0 and 65. Then, put a line break by punching enter every after 65 characters or less. In that way, you won't have to deal with an odd-looking layout and know exactly how your document will look like in print.

Using the ASCII resume format may look a little bit of a hassle, but you can almost be sure of a rewarding online job hunting once you got the hang of it.

Nelson Mullins is a former corporate hiring and recruitment expert who regularly writes articles on resumes, resume writing, personality development, and career in general. He is a father of three who also enjoys photography and biking. Nelson believes that while the employment world continues to be a rat race for applicants, it is important to always be equipped with new ideas on sustaining career growth and opportunities.

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Resume ASCII Conversion Experiment: Object Lesson

Because ASCII (plain text) conversion for resumes sent within e-mail messages is so critical and common to current practice, I now include it as a service for resume writing clients. Everyone has e-mail now, and hiring managers are no exception. It's your job to make sure that what you send to them in the body of your e-mails is as readable as what you see on your own screen. For this reason, you need to convert your resume to ASCII, or plain text before copying into the body of your e-mail. Otherwise, what you send inevitably will not be what your receiver reads-he or she will simply get a messy document that takes too much time to sort out. Your potentially excellent message will be lost in the medium, and your resume will wind up in the trash.

To prove the value of ASCII conversion, I did a test case and sent myself a variety of e-mails containing a few different resumes I wrote for clients, just to see how they convert. I learned a lot from this experiment. Overall, the conversion is poor, and it largely depends on the settings that the reader has determined, ranging from font set to reading preferences (HTML vs. plain text) as well as the e-mail client (reader) the person is using. In other words, the only predictability in the output was that it was, well, unpredictable.

The following are the types of errors I discovered in my quest.

Font Conversion The bullets and special characters turned into odd-looking wingdings or foreign alphabet characters that I didn't choose in my original design. Because you don't know what font set the reader will have on his or her e-mail, you have to assume that the font conversion will be messy and unpredictable at best. The result is a hodgepodge of characters that might or might not correlate to what you actually intended to write.

Display All of the formatting was lost. Tabs, spacing, text formatting, font, everything. The only element that was retained in the conversion was capitalization. In a good resume design, the resume writer uses underlining, bolding, italics, and indenting to clue the reader into what is important. That element was completely lost in the test case, which made the document look like a long, bland page of undifferentiated text.

Rules (lines between sections) showed up in my test e-mails, but not necessarily how I designed the original resume. You can guarantee that if you don't convert your document to ASCII properly, what you had centered or shaded will appear at the whim of your recipient's e-mail client (reader). Whatever the settings are on the reader's end are what will determine the way your resume appears. It's guaranteed it won't look like your lovely formatted Word version.

Paragraphs were included as one long line with no text wrapping. This is simply unpleasant to read-one should not have to scroll horizontally to read the whole message.

Spacing after paragraphs was unpredictable and often too deep. These kinds of spacing errors are messy and unappealing-and they take up extra page space when your resume is printed.

Footer and Text Box Information Is Lost In my test case, the address was in the footer, and the e-mail and phone number were included in a text box at the top of the document. Both were lost in the conversion. A hiring manager won't be able to contact you if you don't appear to have included your key contact information.

Conclusions from My ASCII Experiment

The foregoing list of errors is from a cursory review of the e-mails I sent to myself-there might be other errors that your system, or your recipient's system injects that neither you nor I could predict now. There are simply too many variables. Therefore, I suggest that if you are sending your resume via e-mail, you need to learn to convert to ASCII and present your resume well.

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