The birth of the Internet has resulted in a whole new media, and it is unwise to ignore this medium. A perfect CV is of little use unless it can be presented in the format that the employer needs.
Electronic CVs or e-cvs come into use more and more, these days and are usually in two types:
ASCII plain text CVs which are used when pasting a CV into an email message or onto a website e-form or CV builder.
Web CVs, E-Portfolios and cv blogs which are web-based career marketing documents that give a 24/7 online marketing presence.
A printed scannable CV is not an E-CV but it can become one after it has been scanned and merged into an receiving software. Most employers seem to prefer an email rather than a fax.
ASCII Text CVs
ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange and is the language for documents shared between various computers and software. It uses a coding scheme that assigns a binary value to letters, numbers and other characters.
There are many benefits to pasting the CV into an email message as all that is sent is neatly available to the reader in one bundle of information. Whereas if one attaches the data, it requires the reader to open it and many people are wary of the virus threat contained in an attachment. Many employers delete emails with attachments. An excellent CV tip is to paste the CV into the email message thus avoiding message attack which puts the reader on the defensive. A professional CV writer would always paste the CV instead of attaching it. When writing a CV, some thought on how to present a CV in the best way should be undertaken.
There are some disadvantages in using the ASCII format:
It is a simple and very plain text that lacks designer appeal.
By posting to career sites the competition is increased as the sites are very large.
It can be difficult to read when printed and may be converted in error by the end-application word processor.
But there are advantages:
It is universally readable by computers.
It is easily transposed into a database.
It can be distributed instantly to hundreds of recruiters or employers.
It shows off technical knowledge.
Construct-A-CV recommend that:
When emailing or pasting the CV use plain text (.txt) conversion option in Microsoft Word.
Use only keyboard characters.
Replace any bullets with asterisks (*).
Add white space more freely than normal to improve readability.
Consider using a row of characters (~) to help the visual design.
Whereas it is unwise to:
Place more than 60 characters on each line (including spaces and punctuation).
Not save the ASCII version as well as the original CV format.
Use an attachment.
Send anything other than the CV in the email.
As with all CV writing and CV presentation, it is essential to do a test run and see what the ASCII will actually look like to an email recipient. Test by sending an email message to yourself and to a friend, if possible, someone who has a different word processor. The art of CV writing and getting that interview is to view the whole exercise from the employer perspective. Another CV tip is to avoid anti-spam filters which may delete the CV! To reduce this risk, do not use spam-type words such as free, trial or expand.
How to Publish Your CV Online
The ASCII or .txt file is used to post the online CV to a career website or an employer company site. Some sites use text boxes after filling the usual registration procedure and assigning a password to the site. Otherwise it is simply pasting your internet CV from the clipboard when prompted. The major career posting sites are available through Google.
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