3 - Bring Back Lost Bullet Points. In theory, bullet points from your formatted resume should be transformed into asterisks during an ASCII conversion. In theory. Meaning, check those bullet points. If they vanished, or were turned into question marks, fix them by making them asterisks. 4 - Look For Other Anomalies. Scan for other characters that may have gone wacky in the process. Candidates for conversion wackiness include the em dash (similar to an extended hyphen), diacritical marks (i.e., the accent mark above a letter), and other characters created by your application software and not found on the keyboard. The fix for these anomalies is to find the closest approximation that resides on your keyboard. Tip: if it appears on your keyboard, it's ASCII supported. 5 - Improve Readability by Re-Formatting Category Headings. To make your plain text resume more pleasing to the eye, consider placing your category headings (i.e. Profile, Education, Experience, etc.) in ALL CAPS to help distinguish the various sections of the resume. Think about adding a series of marks either directly above or below the category headings, crafting either a full line or partial line. You might try a series of equal signs ====== or tildes/squigglies ~~~~~~ for the sake of appearance. Don't go crazy, and remember to limit any character additions to those found on the keyboard. Plain Text Resume Conversion Completed - And ReadableYou're almost ready to present your plain text resume to the world. As a last step, test your new and improved
ASCII resume by emailing it to yourself and a friend or family member. Preferably someone with a different email
client (e.g. Outlook, Hotmail, Thunderbird, etc.). Does it look OK? You're good to go. A Final Thought...File format notwithstanding, if you've been in the job market for weeks or months and your resume isn't making the phone ring, it's time to reevaluate the document that is supposed to be selling you. Writing an effective resume has never been a walk in the park, but in this tough economy, resume writing is even more challenging. If your resume is going to be fighting for attention in an extremely competitive field, the services of a professional resume writer might make sense. If you opt for some help, seek out a certified resume writer, and a writer who will guarantee the resume he creates will generate interviews. Yes, they're out there. In fact, I can help you identify that "pro," that special writer who is qualified to deliver a polished document that puts your best foot forward in a tough job market. The page Resume Writing Services Reviews identifies 10 or more of the more popular companies out there, and I rank these writers on values like...
You’ll find star rankings, mini-reviews, and in-depth reviews on each of these 10 companies. Whether you go it alone or trust the services of a pro writer, I wish you the best of luck in your job search! – David
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Resume service... looking for a good one? Former recruiter David Alan Carter offers in-depth reviews of resume writers and professional resume
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