Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
January/February 2003

Book Review: e-Resumes

by Jeff Staples
Houston Chapter

e-Resumes: Everything You Need to Know About Using Electronic Resumes to Tap into Today’s Hot Job Market, Susan Britton Whitcomb and Pat Kendall, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002

This article is reprinted from the December 2002 issue of Dateline Houston, newsletter of the STC Houston Chapter.

Should I use PDF, RTF, or maybe ASCII for creating my e-resume? Do I want to provide specific contact information or do I want my e-resume to convey little contact-related information? These decisions and many others—such as the right keywords to use—are addressed in eResumes. The descriptive subtitle says it all: “Everything you need to know about using electronic resumes.”

The authors have included a host of resources for the e-resume developer, including effective writing strategies, visual aids, and design templates.

Keywords for Your
e-Resume

Chapter 1 provides interesting information on various types of electronic resumes. Chapter 2 focuses on keywords and the value that they add to an e-resume, which will probably be searched rather than read. You learn that today a computer will probably be scanning your resume searching for keywords to decide whether you are a match for the position available.

The authors coin a new definition for ROI and consider it “the secret to writing a winning eResume” (page 33). It’s important to be familiar with keywords in your particular industry, and the chapter offers a list of keywords that recruiters say they typically look for and a number of resources for finding applicable keywords.

Going ASCII

Chapter 3 covers ASCII e-resumes. You learn coding for ASCII characters and see examples of what can go wrong when characters are used incorrectly. There is a great discussion on formatting resumes to be inserted in email messages and in e-forms on job-search web sites.

If you have covered Chapter 3, then you have created an ASCII resume. Chapters 4 and 5 take you through the process of submitting your ASCII resume into an e-form and attaching it to an email message. An important point of the chapter is to use the universal language—plain text—when submitting your e-resume via email and the Internet. And don’t forget the cover letter, or you run the risk of being regarded as “a bit clueless.”

Effectiveness of Your
e-Resume

In Chapter 8, the focus is on the effectiveness of your e-resume. Many items that you focus on in your printed resume, such as typography and capturing an employer’s attention, hold true for electronic resumes as well. In addition, with an online resume, you can consider features such as graphics and color. Good examples of resumes demonstrate before-and-after effects on e-resumes that use the techniques the authors recommend.

Chapter 9 is for the do-it-yourself individual. The focus is on creating your own e-resume by working directly with the HTML code.

Posting Your e-Resume Online

Chapter 10 is a must-read, even for the seasoned e-resume developer. Here, you find a discussion of privacy issues associated with posting and distributing e-resumes. In addition, several examples convey how much or how little you want your resume to reveal. But the information does not stop there. Now that you have created your electronic resume, where do you send it? This chapter provides several suggestions on where to post your resume, including career, recreation, and resume-distribution web sites.

The authors have assembled information that covers a multitude of items related to the creation and distribution of e-resumes. This book should serve both as a great starting point to compile or enhance your electronic resume and as a great reference in your technical communication library.

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