The JobSync Blog
Back to Basics: How to Submit a Resume
December 14, 2011
You’ve fine-tuned your resume for the umpteenth time, and it’s looking pretty good if you don’t say so yourself. It’s clean, readable, and highlights what you’ve achieved for past employers, thereby hinting what you can do for a future employer. You’ve found a great job listing and are ready to apply, and then you get hit by Submit-itis – uncontrolled anxiety about how to submit a resume.
Author and consultant Alison Green has just the cure for this condition, in which a candidate sweats the small stuff of getting a resume to a potential employer. The following are what she feels you need to know, summarized from a recent U.S. News article she wrote. If the tips are not in line with a company’s instructions for applying, however, she urges you to follow the employer’s guidelines:
1. PDF vs. Microsoft Word: A resume can be in either format, but you are better off in PDF as your resume’s formatting will be preserved. On the other hand, a Word document on an employer’s computer could look different from how it looks on your computer. And don’t submit your resume in both formats. Otherwise, an employer may waste time opening up both to see if there’s something different between the two documents.
2. Putting the cover letter in the body of an email vs. sending it as an attachment. Either approach is fine, but Green feels incorporating a cover letter into the body of an email makes it easier and faster to read. If you do decide to attach the cover letter, just write in the body of the email, “I would like to apply for the _ position. Attached please find my cover letter and resume” (i.e., keep it short and sweet).
3. Name your computer’s resume file something relevant and restrained. In other words, something like “John Brown’s resume.pdf” (as opposed to “I’m-the-man.doc”).
4. Keep an additional plain-text, unformatted version of your resume handy. This will be useful when you are asked to submit your resume by copying and pasting it into a company’s website form. It will also be helpful to have this if you are requested to submit a resume as text in the body of an email.
So don’t sweat the small stuff. Save some of that perspiration for when you are preparing for an interview with that perfect-fitting job.
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