With an increasing number of applications, (both in the private and public sector), requiring candidates to submit their information online – this week, I thought I would devote some time to the tools and techniques that you need to know in relation to resume formats and submitting a government application online, so that you don’t stuff up your online application.
Yep this stuff is as exciting as watching paint dry, BUT with the explosion of the internet during the job search, it is really important to keep abreast with these changes, because if you don’t – it could mean disaster for your online applications.
Use the right resume format for online applications
In the past decade, the most common resume-related questions have shifted from the standard functional versus chronological resumes, whether to include dates of education, removing or keeping experience and so on, to what type of resume should be used for transmission and online.
With the advent in the last few years of online technologies, we have seen the email resume, web resume, HTML resume, scannable resume, ASCII resume, PDF resume, along with the traditional word resume.
So what is the difference between all these resumes?
Word Resume (or traditional resume), is designed to compel the human audience to take further action and call you for an interview. Designed in word, they are formatted and written in a way to draw the eye to areas that focus on your achievements and are written in a powerful way that holds the attention span of the human reader.
PDF Resumes – are traditional resume converted to PDF for online transmission. If you want to convert your word document, without buying expensive software – try
Scannable resumes – are designed to meet the needs of resumes fed through OCR (optical character recognition) software that reads and extracts the text. The extracted text is database for storage and later recalled by keyword from an applicant tracking system.
Text (ASCII) resumes is an ASCII-formatted version of either your traditional or scannable resume. Text resumes are universally readable on all computer systems and platforms. An ASCII resume received in email can be entered directly into an applicant tracking system without the added step of needing to scan it. Entry into the system is fast, easy, and accurate.
Web resume – also known as the HTML, a web resume may be uploaded online, allowing 24 hour access and provides a technology-savvy image.
When ascertaining what type of resume version you require, you also need to take into account, whether the resume audience is going to be the human reader, or computer reader. So many job seekers post their resumes online (for example major online job boards) with no success, as they have failed to develop a resume for the computer reader.
To develop a resume for the computer reader, you need to understand that the computer will review resumes based on keyword searches – hence the need to incorporate keywords throughout the resume, so the computer reader is alerted to your suitability.
How to incorporate key words in your resume:
The most common types of keywords that signal to both the computer reader and human reader that you have the relevant background are:
- Job Titles
- Skills related to the role
- Jargon/Technical terms
For example:
Job Description:
| The Operations Manager is accountable to the Director of Engineering and Environmental Services for the progression of the asset management strategies of the Mater Health services. Maintenance of infrastructure including maintenance planning, condition assessment, asset register, statutory compliance, budgets are key components. |
Key words that should be incorporated into the résumé
- Operations manager
- Asset management
- Strategy
- Maintenance
- Infrastructure
- Planning
- Condition assessment
- Asset register
- Statutory compliance
- Budgets
Submitting an application online
An increasing number of agencies and companies require information to be submitted via online application forms, entailing specific questions, or your answers to selection criteria, within a word, or character count.
When preparing these documents, use MS Word so you can use features such as spell check and then copy and paste your answers into the provided box. However when preparing in MS Word, ensure that you don’t use auto formatting, such as italics, bolding, underlining, or other automatic formatting allowed in your word processing. These features get stripped or transformed into weird character combinations, when your application is copied and sent online. Basically, you need to work within the limitations of what you see on your keyboard (or rather you need to create an ASCII text version).
For example you will need to replace any bullets with ASCII supported keyboard characters (if it appears on your keyboard, it’s an ASCII character). Such as use an asterisk (*), or (~), which is located on the left hand side of the number 1.
Also remove all centre, right hand margin and justification alignment, table characters, columns and graphics.
This will make your application universally readable and allows for easy to manipulate for entry into applicant ranking databases.
In conclusion:
While the internet can be confusing, by just following a few simple rules, you will be able to use the right sort of document and formatting to ensure that you effectively promote your qualifications and skills to secure that job online.
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