The Scannable or Electronic Résumé

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Having prepared your professional documents, you may want to have a résumé in a scannable or electronic format prepared in advance. In sending on your résumé to a potential employer, scanners, e-mail, e-mail attachments, HTML, or a combination of these methods may be utilized to collect and select résumés. Before sending the document, be sure that you have the exact information regarding the preferred format, which can be "read" by the scanner or utilized by an e-mail system.

• Save the file as text only. This will make the file more easily convertible to other formats.
• Use standard font style (i.e. Times New Roman) size 12.
• Eliminate columns, page breaks, italics, bullets, bold, underlining, graphics, shading and borders.
• Use capital (upper case) letters to replace bold type.
• Omit parentheses and brackets.
• Begin with a profile/summary section or objective statement highlighting your greatest strengths of particular professional interest.
• Include as much detail as possible.
• Use 1" margins (minimum) on all sides, so that information is not lost in the scanning or printing process.
  When sending or hand carrying a scannable résumé, print the document on solid white (not colored or textured) paper and avoid folding the résumé. Use a large, flat envelope for mailing purposes.
• Create a keywords section at the end of your résumé. Remember, when a résumé is scanned, the employer uses keywords to search the database. The more industry specific and marketable keywords you provide the better your chance of having your résumé selected by a hiring manager. List the words in order of importance. Use the keywords included in the job posting. Some examples of keywords are: Management, Information Systems, Database, Systems Analysis, ORACLE, SQL, RDBMS, and logical data modeling.

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