Creating an ASCII or Text Résumé
1. Open the client’s original resume file (in any word processing program).
2. Convert all text into a non-proportional font. From the “edit” menu, choose “select all.” Choose Courier font, size 12.
3. Adjust the margins so there are no more than 65 to 70 characters on any line. Set the right margin to 2” and the top, left and bottom margins to 1”.
4. From the “file” menu, choose “save as.” Rename the file (such as BrooksTextOnly.txt). From the “Save File as Type” drop-down menu, choose “Text Only.”
5. Close the file. (From the “file” menu, choose “close.”)
Fixing Up An ASCII or Text Résumé
1. Open either Notepad (Windows PCs) or Simpletext (Mac). Open the text-only file you created in Part A (above). (From the “file” menu, choose “open” and then select the correct file.)
2. Fix all obvious “character wrap” problems — for example, tabs that are no longer aligned. (If it was a right tab, press return and put it on its own line, for example.)
3. Fix the Résumé Header Information. Put each line of information on a separate line (name, address, city/state/zip, etc.)
4. Fix problems created by substitutions for non-keyboard characters. Replace bullets and font-based characters (such as Wingdings or Zapf Dingbats) with keyboard characters such as ??, *, -, -- or (+).
5. Create sections by adding spacing. Put two lines before topic headings (such as “Education” and “Work Experience”). Also use visible keyboard characters (such as ####, ----, ====, ~~~~, or >>>>>) to separate out topic headings.
6. Make sure everything is lined up in one column. If you used multiple columns or tabs in the formatted résumé, remove them, as the formatting will not come through on the ASCII version of the résumé.
7. Remove extraneous information — such as “continued” notations, second headers for second pages, page breaks, etc.
8. Save the file again. Then close the file, open it up one more time and check to assure all changes were made.
