CPACareerCoach.com

Have you ever been frustrated with how your resume looks when you have to cut and paste it into a text box in order to submit your resume online? Well, I know it frustrates many people and they mistakingly believe that nothing can be done. Well, there is a way to make the presentation of your text version resume look stellar.

I am going to share with you a simple 7 step process to submitting a winning resume online. This might be a bit technical so I would encourage you to poen your current resume now and follow along. Once you do this task, you will never have to worry about doing it again. Here we go!

Step #1: Start with Your Word Resume – Open up the Word version of your resume and click File–> Save as–> Save as Type–> Plain Text

Step #2: Convert the Resume – You will then see a “File Conversion” window pop up, click “OK”, then go ahead and close the file. You will then want to open the file in Notepad. To open in Notepad, click “Start–> Run” then type “notepad” and click “OK”

Step #3: Uncheck Word Wrap – Once you open Notepad, make certain that Word Wrap (on the Format dropdown menu on the toolbar) is not checked.

Step #4: Fix the Formatting – make sure that everything is aligned to the left of the page. Also, make sure that all bullets are now astericks * or hypens -. If you do not change them, then they convert to a question mark (?) and your resume will not look right.

Step #5: Change Section Headers – Take time to locate your section headers and makle them all caps. For example, “Qualifications” should be changed to “QUALIFICATIONS”

Step #6: Ensure there are No Tabs – A text version of your resume can only use spaces. You need to make sure that there are no tabs and unwanted spaces. Go ahead and “left align” everything and if need be just place a comma where needed.

Step #7: The Finished Product – You should now have a well-formatted text style version of your resume that you will be proud to post on job boards or email.