Online Resume Format | ASCII Resume

Post Resume Online: Post Your Resume Using Resume ASCII Format

The most common formats to post resume online are:

ASCII Resume

Do you plan on using your resume on the Internet? If yes, you will need to create a resume designed for pasting into web sites and email. Normal resume documents are great for printing, but they don’t work well on the Internet.

ASCII (pronounced “Ask-ee”) is a text-only format without any kind of formatting. It`s the sort of document you can create with Notepad.ASCII is your best option to post resume online when you are sure that your resume will only be read by a computer.

If your online resume will be loaded into a resume database or an online job-board (such as Monster.com ) you should create an ASCII resume. All the formatting you painstakingly added to your resume must be removed before it’s fed to a computer: while the formatting is a welcome eye-candy” for a human reader, it becomes confusing noise to a computer database.

Unfortunately, ASCII´s lack of visual appeal can be a hindrance when image and resume design is important to a candidate. However – and this is critical – when employers request an ASCII resume, send them an ASCII resume and don’t be concerned about its appearance.

Checklist for Posting Resume Online in ASCII Format

If you are using our resume builder, EasyJob, you can easilycreate ascii resumes by clicking on the “Save as ASCII text”, and it will take care of all the grunt work. Free download EasyJob Resume Builder demo here and feel free to skip this part if you are using EasyJob:

  1. Open your resume with MS Word and save it as “Text Only”. Unlike EasyJob, MS Word will seriously mess the layout of your resume while saving as text-only. You will have to fix this manually.
  2. Close MS Word and open up your resume with Notepad.
  3. Rearrange the layout of your resume by doing a line-by-line review. Make sure there are no odd-looking line-breaks, extra spaces or words squeezed together. You may have to insert extra lines or commas between text that was in a table, as all tables and formatting is now gone.
  4. Insert some standard symbol, such as *, – or + where there used to be a bullet.
  5. Curly quotes might also have disappeared, so make sure all text that should be quoted uses standard, strait quotes.
  6. Limit the length of your lines to a maximum of 75 characters per line. Longer lines might be truncated by some software applications.

When Should You Use an ASCII Online Resume Format?

Use a text-only ASCII resume format if you want to post your resume online to a job board unless the job board specifically instructs otherwise. You should use it also when the employer specifically requests that a resume be in ASCII format.

Our resume builder, EasyJob, lets you create a ASCII resumeto post online with a single click and is probably one of the most affordable applications to create good ASCII resume documents. EasyJob can also create a PDF resume, HTML resume, MS Word resume and email it in a single simple step. Download here EasyJob demo and check it out NOW for FREE!

See the following articles for more information on online resume formats:

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One-step resume posting to multiple resume banks