E-resumes are the current trend with pilot employers, with more and more companies moving away from paper. Fortunately this benefits pilot applicants. Your information is now delivered within seconds instead of days, time and expense to print and mail your resume is eliminated, and your information now often sits in an
employer-searchable database.
An employer will receive your e-resume via one of two ways:
-
1. Email
-
2. Web form (online application)
Email
Pilot recruiters commonly want your e-resume sent to a company human resources email address. But just how do you send it? Attach it as a
Word (.doc) document, or as plain text (also called ASCII text; text
without the fancy formatting) within the email message body?
The rule of thumb is that if an employer does not give specific
instructions, attach your Word-formatted resume to your outgoing email
AND embed your plain text resume and cover letter into the email's
message body. Otherwise, given specific instructions, follow them.
Web form
Once you have a plain text version of your resume, you are able to
easily submit your resume to company online application forms as well. Some airlines will have you cut-and-paste your plain text resume
directly into one field, while others will have you insert your
information into many individual fields (Name, Address, Employer 1,
etc). Either way, once you have your original Word-formatted resume
in a plain text (.txt) version, it's an easy cut-and-paste procedure.
Converting a Word resume/cover letter into plain text
With a completed resume and cover letter in Word, it's time to make
another version: a plain text (.txt) version. Here's how:
- Open your Word (.doc) resume/cover letter
- File > Save As
- Change "Save as type" to Plain Text (.txt)
- Change the file name to reflect the new file extension (joesmithtextresume.txt, for example)
- Click Save
- In the next dialog box, check the box "Insert line breaks" and click "OK."
- Now open Notepad (Start > All Programs > Accessories > Notepad)
- Open the plain text (.txt) document you just saved in Notepad
Your resume has changed from a heavily formatted one to a no-frills one. But it needs some cleaning up now.
Where bullets were once used,
now use an asterisk, plus sign, dash, or hyphen (use two in a row if
you wish). For headlines, use ALL CAPS.
To insert white space between
sections, simply insert an extra return. Make sure the lines are
limited to 60 characters and spaces; otherwise they will wrap
prematurely.
Now cut-and-paste your new plain text resume. In Word, on
the top menu select Edit > Select All (or highlight only the text you need if you're using a web form with many input fields). Select Edit >
Copy. Now open your email program, click your cursor in the email
message field, and then right-click and select Paste.
The same
procedure is used for web forms, except the last step, where you
right-click and paste into the text field instead.
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