Online Resumes...Gone are the days of staples!

Gone are the days of staples, torn paper edges and plastic sleeves. Online Resumes are the future. These are beneficial to both the employer and the candidate as it increases control in the recruitment process. It shortens the anticipation as there is no longer a need to wait weeks, or even days, for applications to be received, collated and examined.

Technology is moving even beyond just e-mailing your resume to a potential employer. There’s now a multitude of websites that specialise in helping you to create your online resume, resulting in more exposure to potential employers for you. This means more chance of you finding that perfect job even faster!

So why use an online resume? One key reason is keywords. Today, employers often scan resumes looking for keywords, and it certainly isn’t one person sitting there reading every resume the company has received. Electronic scanning means that your resume needs to be in electronic form – or chances are you’ll miss out. If you’re applying for a particular job, find out what it is the employer is looking for – and customize your resume!

Creating an online resume means that your personalised resume information is available online. You have two choices – one is to protect your information, meaning it can only be accessed by people that you give a special code to. The other is having your information public, meaning any potential employer could search for your information. Obviously there’s pros and cons to both of these – it’s a matter of privacy versus exposure, and there is no one right answer to this.

An online resume means potential employers are able to search online, through databases created by different websites. For public resumes, this means a higher chance that a potential employer will come across your information. Again, this is where keywords are so important, because potential employers will be searching for particular experience, qualifications or personal characteristics. It’s also possible to create multiple resumes, so if you’re interested in jobs in a few different industries, this is a great chance for you to increase your exposure to different employers, who would be looking for different qualities, qualifications and experience in a candidate.

Here are some tips to ensure your resume is up to date and relevant online;

• List your technical strengths first
• List your qualifications in order of relevance to the position you are applying for
• Don't sell yourself short, include your achievements
• Make sure your resume is credible! (one out of five people lie in their resumes)
• Be concise, try and keep your resume to one or two pages
• Exclude needless items
• Key words are important. Employers search with key words when looking at resumes, what do you want to be recognised as? Dynamic? Then make it a consistent theme throughout your resume.
• Have a trusted friend review your resume, and give their honest opinion
• Proofread your resume before you send or upload it


What format do I put my resume in?

The three main formats used when doing online resume’s are, ASCII Text, HTML and PDF.

How do I convert my resume for these formats?

ASCII - Make up your resume in your word processing software and save the document as “ASCII” text or “text only document” or “Rich Text Format (RTF)”. Put “.txt” after ASCII when you save it. This is the most popular format used online.

HTML- HTML is ‘Hyper Text Markup Language’ used by the web browser to display web content. HTML controls the format, fonts, margins, layouts, colors, tables, links and several other items on the web page. HTML Editors, Microsoft FrontPage can be helpful in developing HTML resumes.

PDF - The Portable Document format is often used as an alternative of HTML. Unlike HTML, it is “embedded” and will not change with different browser settings. However it does require that the viewer has the Adobe Acrobat viewer. Converting a document to PDF format requires the Adobe Acrobat or third party software that can convert various document formats to PDF (such as plug ins for Microsoft Word).


Where can I upload my resume?

There are various employment sites to post your resume. Here are a few you might like to visit.

• iD Logik – www.idlogik.com
• Australian Job Search - www.jobsearch.gov.au (This is currently Australia’s largest employment website)
• ComeOnAussieDotCom - http://www.comeonaussie.com/categories/employment.html
• JobsPLUS – www.jobsplus.com.au