It is increasingly important for job seekers, therefore, to create ASCII versions of their résumés for submission via e-mail or online forms, and in this Digital Tip we show you how. Keep in mind that an ASCII résumé is an electronic document, and as such it is not the same as a scannable résumé—that is, a printed résumé designed so that employers and agencies can scan it into their systems.

In what follows, we cover the three essential steps in making a successful ASCII résumé:

In order to convert your résumé to ASCII, you must remove all formatting except what you can do with capitalization, the space bar, and the enter key. The quickest way to make the change is to save your document as a text file in the application you used to create it. To do so,

1. Open your résumé in the application in which you created it (for example, Microsoft Word or WordPerfect).
2. Select File --> Save As.
3. Select "Text only" from the "Save as type" menu (see figure below).

Now open the file for editing in a text-only editor. To do so,

1. Open a text editor. In Windows, use Notepad (generally located at Start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Notepad). In Mac OS, use SimpleText (generally located in the Apple menu).
2. Select File --> Open, and open your new .txt résumé file.

Your résumé is now in strict plain-text ASCII—and it probably looks like a mess. The next step is formatting.

Converting to ASCII has probably made a mess of your résumé. It is now completely left justified, and any bullets or other special characters you used have been converted to question marks or other symbols. Formats such as bolding, italics, lines, and shadingare simply gone. Follow these steps to reformat your résumé as an ASCII version:

1. Ensure that your text editor is using a fixed-width font (a font in which all letters and spaces are precisely the same size; Courier is the most common).
2. Replace all odd characters (such as bullets and other formatting characters) with text characters (for example, use asterisks where you previously had bullets).
3. Make your headings stand out by using capitalization and/or underlining your headings with a series of dashes.
4. Align your text using spaces (NOT tabs, which can have unpredictable results in text readers).
5. Inspect your document for any lines longer than 65 characters. Wherever a line exceeds 65 characters, add a hard return so that the length of the line remains under 65 characters; this is important because word wrap frequently will not work properly in some text editors.
6. Test your résumé formatting by e-mailing a copy to yourself. (Paste it into the message rather than attaching it.)

Now that you have an ASCII-formatted version of your résumé, you can make it database-ready by adding appropriate keywords.

Your résumé will be going into a database that will probably be searched by employers using keywords (for example, if they need a C++ programmer, they'll search using the keyword "C++"). So it's critical that your résumé contain keywords that will ensure it comes up during employer searches. To add keywords, follow these steps:

1. Create a "Keywords" section at the bottom of your résumé using the same formatting as you did in the rest of the résumé.
2. Add appropriate keywords. Consider adding the following (it's okay to repeat words used elsewhere in your résumé):

• Alternate titles for your job. A technical writer, for example, could be called an information architect, a content engineer, an editor, etc.
• Languages, both spoken and computer.
• Computer applications you can use.
• Specific skills you have.
• Industry-specific jargon, acronyms, etc.
• Affiliations (organizations important in the field).