Plain Text Resumes: How to Make Them a Little Less Ugly
July 31, 2008 (11:45AM) by Julie O'Malley, CPRW
 At some point in your job hunt, you'll probably be asked to submit a resume as plain text (aka, just text or ASCII text). When this happens, you'll have to convert your handsome, professional-looking resume into a bare-bones document with no formatting. Just line after line of ugly, typewriter-ish text. Bleh.
Although a text resume can't have any bling, with a little keyboard creativity, you can at least give it some zing.
Why would anyone ask for a plain text resume, when a formatted resume is so much more attractive and easier to read? Blame technology. Many larger companies scan resumes into a database for sorting and storage, and scanners don't like formatting.
Some organizations also prohibit opening e-mail attachments for fear of viruses; they want plain text in the body of the e-mail. And posting your resume on an online job board usually requires plain text.
Making a resume look good in plain text is challenging, but not impossible. Some mild creativity with your keyboard can make your text resume more attractive and more readable, without creating problems on the recipient's end.
Formatting You CANNOT Use in a Plain Text Document:
- NO text effects such as bold, italics, underlining, centering, etc.
- NO special characters or bullets (you can't use the Ctrl or Alt key, or the Apple key on a Mac).
- NO tabbed indents (don't use the Tab key at all).
- NO lines more than about six inches long (that's about 60 characters, in 10-pt type) — use the Enter key to create line breaks where necessary.
Formatting You CAN Use in a Plain Text Document:
- Any basic keyboard character — letter, number, symbol, or punctuation mark — in upper or lower case.
- Line breaks to create spacing (hit the Enter key two or more times).
- ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS.
- Rows of one character to create a "line" (===== or ~~~~~)
- Bullet substitutes such as plus signs (+), asterisks (*), or hyphens (-) combined with spacebar indenting.
EXAMPLES:
Here is an excerpt from a plain text resume as it might normally appear:
Pat Jobseeker 123 Main Street Yourtown, ST 12345 (555) 444-3333 patjobseeker@email.com
Summary of Qualifications
More than 3 years supervisory experience leading teams of up to 12 retail associates Consistent record of 7 to 8% sales growth in each of the past 5 quarters
Earned top regional sales award for 2006 and 2007
Work History
Sept 2004 - Present
Retail Supervisor
Germani's Emporium, Yourtown, ST
Spearheaded team-based sales initiative in upscale men's clothing store that produced unprecedented quarterly revenue increases
Not so readable, eh? Below is the same plain text resume with some keyboard-created "zing." All I did was enter line breaks to separate the sections; add rows of squiggles (~) and all CAPS to draw attention to the headings; and type asterisks (*) followed by two spaces to simulate bullets. For two-line bullet items, I inserted a line break at the end of Line 1, and hit the spacebar three times to indent the second line.
Pat Jobseeker
123 Main Street
Yourtown, ST 12345
(555) 444-3333
patjobseeker@email.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* Retail sales professional with more than 3 years of supervisory
experience hiring, training, and leading up to 20 associates
* Consistent record of 7 to 8% sales growth for past 5 quarters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
WORK HISTORY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sept 2004 - Present
RETAIL SUPERVISOR
Germani's Emporium, Yourtown, ST
* Spearheaded team-based sales initiative in upscale men's clothing
store that produced unprecedented quarterly revenue increases
Not breathtaking, but certainly better. Are you wondering HOW to convert your resume into plain text? It's easy.
PongoResume Subscribers: Open the resume in your Pongo account, click Download, and choose the Download as Text option. (Your text resume will already be optimized for readability.)
From MS Word: Open your resume in Word, then select Save As and choose Plain Text from the Save as Type dropdown. (Then add your keyboard-based formatting.)
All in all, a plain text resume may not be as gorgeous as its professionally designed and nicely formatted counterparts, but it can still do the trick. And when it wins you an interview, be sure to bring along paper copies of the nice version to hand out!
Please leave a comment below if you have any other tips for beautifying a text resume, or if you have questions, thoughts, or random musings you'd like to share!
Thanks for the information it was helpful.
Glad to hear it, Sandra!
-Julie
MS Office has a Word Count function similar to your Spell Check function. Find the icon and add it to your toolbar. Take a close look at the pop-up screen and you will notice that it gives you No of Characters, which will come in very handy!
It took me about 4 hours to convert my resume to Plain Text, make it readable once I had saved it. Four Hours??? Yep, but once it is done, you can re-arrange the bullets or reword them according to the job description of the position to which you are applying. Much easier! This is what I did:
I completely redid all of the formatting. One tip I used was to take each bullet point and condense it to 60 charachters or less...this means using the Word Count icon on each and every line, but then there are no "word wraps" that look confusing to the receiver. It forced me to reeaallllyyy think about what each bullet was trying to present.
If you choose to you keep your bullet points longer than 60 characters, using this function will tell you where it is best to ENTER, so that you do not split the end word in a weird place.
I did not think, however, to use "repeated letters or symbols" as section dividers. That is a good tip.
Also, I am glad you mentioned that ALL CAPS is accepted andnot considered yelling.
Drat! Now I have to look at it again, use your tips to make it look better...another hour or so! LOL
Good to know and understand reason for p l a i n type TEXT RESUME... written explanation + PLUS visual example very helpful.
More information on applying for jobs via "IT". This entirely new for me and others.
@Tina and @Edward
Thanks for the comments. I'm glad the information was helpful.
Julie
Very useful information, about a situation I believe has been aggravated by those badly designed resume templates which are widely distributed. I used to tell job candidate that the first thing they needed to do was delete the resume templates found in MS Word, to eliminate the temptation to use them.
I've been a technical recruiter for several years, starting out in the days when resume distribution services would mail a full ream of contract engineer resumes to my office, and we'd sift through the hard copies to find one or two usable candidates.
Full text resume databases and the now common usage of email greatly enhanced the speed of the recruiting process, but hasn't always improved the quality of communication.
When it comes to resumes, I still find only a handful of candidates, usually those with contract engineering backgrounds, who understand how to deliver solid information about their technical skills and work history in a concise and readable manner.
One practice that the best candidates employ is to keep formatted versions in MS Word, PDF and HTML versions that can also be pasted directly into an ASCII text application, such as Notepad, without looking weird.
The technique for accomplishing this is surprisingly simple, but few candidates I've mentioned it to will actually try it. Which is to not compose the resume in Word.
Compose the resume first in ASCII text, using Notepad or a similar text editor. Keep the layout simple, avoid tabbing, blank spacing and other layout tricks. Concentrate instead on delivering good content, using a straight forward writing style, with a consistent organization of information from section to section.
Once the resume is polished and looks good in plain text, just copy and paste that text into MS Word. Select a good looking font (only one) and make some restrained use of bolding and other text enhancements. Save again as PDF and HTML.
The test I use when I open the resume document is to Select All, Copy and Paste the text into Notepad.
If the resulting document is unreadable, my assumption that this candidate has little of value to tell me, or just has very poor documentation skills, usually proves true in any interview.
If the plain text document is readable, and effectively communicates what this person has done and could do, then that candidate probably does have the ability to get and keep a job. They can at least get an interview.
@Paul gilmore
Great advice, Paul. Thanks for communicating that so well!
Since you set this up so perfectly, I feel compelled to point out that Pongo Resume members can do all of the above with the click of a button.
Resumes created and stored in the Pongo Resume Builder can be instantly converted to PDF, Word, HTML, or plain text, then downloaded, e-mailed or faxed in that format, right from our site.
(End of plug ;)
--Julie
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