Guide for Resume Writers: Understanding IT

I have to admit, I don't like writing Information Technology (IT) resumes. Unfortunately, I find myself doing it more often than I like. This article, which I call "Introduction to Programming: A Guide for Resume Writers" was written to help HR professionals understand IT candidates.

It also provides resume writers who are not very familiar with the IT field with a good basic foundation for assessing their clients strengths.

Companies Looking to Define "Applicants"

In an article in the September 2002 issue of HR Magazine, there was a profile of a company called Air Products that had difficulty meeting federal government standards for tracking applicants. Because they receive more than 30,000 resumes per month, they needed a way to narrow down the number of people they considered true "applicants" to comply with requirements for their company as a federal contractor.

Here's the system they devised:
"A person visits the Air Products web site to peruse openings. Then he creates a personal profile -- essentially a resume -- and attaches it to an opening in which he is interested. Air Products recruiters can access only those profiles tied to positions. (To try the system, visit the Career Center portion of Air Products' web site).

If the site visitor is interested in more than one opening, he attaches his profile to each position. Each application then shows up in the recruiters' database. Once an interested person has attached his resume to a job, it remains on the site and can be reused. Unattached profiles are also stored but are not accessible to recruiters.

A visitor who doesn't find an appropriate opening can set up a software agent that will send him an e-mail when one is posted."

Air Products now defines "applicants" as anyone who has filled out a profile and attached it to an opening."

Now here's where it gets interesting for resume writers and their clients:

"Air Products recruiters will not accept paper resumes - no exceptions. "We posted a vice president position and got 158 applications in six days, "Brockington recalls. About a half dozen would-be applicants tried to circumvent the system by sending a resume to someone they knew in the company. "I told those applicants 'you have to go online,' and all of them did."

Top Companies for Older Workers

As the population ages, so does the possibility of age discrimination in the job search. Quint Careers has compiled a list of companies recognized by AARP for "valuing the mature worker."

Here's a link to the AARP web site with more information about the "Best Employers for Workers Over 50."

Creating an ASCII Text Resume

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.