Emailing resumes...

[01rangerxl]

So it's time for me to start emailing my resume out for a summer internship.

I have a nicely formatted resume done up in Word. I used tables to make it look nice...my career counselor liked it, and it got me an A in business communication. I sent test emails to myself to try it out. When opened up in Word it looks fine of course, exactly how I want it. However, Outlook opened it by default with the awful "full screen viewer." For whatever reason that trashed the formatting. I'm worried if an HR person has their email set to use that stupid viewer, they might just delete my email and move on.

So, I have some questions.
1) Should I just give up on the nice appearance and make a simpler design? Mind you, my resume isn't overdone or fancy, the tables just make all the text "balanced" or whatever and easy to read.
2) Should I include a plain text resume below my cover letter in the body of the email? I would still attach a nicer looking resume.
3) Is it acceptable to have the resume as a .pdf attachment? I can't imagine any company would not have Adobe Reader on their computers in 2009, but it seems Word files are the common format to use.

I'm probably going to ask the career center about this stuff, but I figured there would be people from the real world here who might be able to give me some pointers on what to do here.

 

[Boomer]

Can't you put a message in your cover E-mail to open with "Word" to get proper formatting??

 

[Nyquist]

PDFs would be easier. That way someone can't inadvertently mess it up too.

I'm readying some resumes myself, and I'm sticking to PDFs for electronic distribution.

 

[GMBoy]

I agree - PDF may be the way to go.

 

[Dave Hess]

But will some prospective employeers dislike the fact that they need to use Adobe just to read your resume ?

 

[Johnny]

Make a pdf and a word document and attach both to your email. That way you can tell them to open which ever one is easier on them. If you save it as a word document, it should open as a word document.

 

[rationull]

Personally I'd go with PDF too. I doubt PDF would be a problem for any HR people, but who knows.

 

[The_Jeff]

HTML may read pretty okay too, or perhaps .rtf (rich text) which is a real simple formatting.

If you want to get crazy, look for public publications from a prospective employer's website and see how they format stuff for output... then match it.

openoffice has a .pdf export and there are other freeware .pdf distillers that look like printers to your word processor.

 

[CivicFan]

I don't know why MS came up with that full screen viewer. It doesn't even work.

If the HR person opens it the .doc file and it is on the full screen view, they probably are used to it and will revert to the regular view.

 

[uc50ic4more]

Word is tricky; as you have to concern yourself over whether or not the receiving party has a version that will display the document properly, and you are also then sending them an editable document.

.pdf is, as a format, ubiquitous enough to warrant using it in this instance.

Perhaps you could also maintain a well laid out HTML version online as well?

 

[rat]

For what its worth, I have been laid off for a few months and been sending resumes out in every possible way. I recently spoke to the talent aquisition director at a very large company, he helped me out by telling me that cover letters are really not important anymore, and that most companies that require emailed resumes prefer word format.

 

[StevieC]

I would use PRIMO PDF which is a free software that installs a fake printer, and anything you print to it makes it into a PDF file. I use this for my Resumes and my employers seem to like the PDF.

 

[The_Jeff]

May be worth opening your finished PDF to see if you can highlight, cut & paste text out of it. Some pdfs are images. Some companies use robot text scanners to look for keywords.

 

[01rangerxl]

Originally Posted By: eljefino
May be worth opening your finished PDF to see if you can highlight, cut & paste text out of it. Some pdfs are images. Some companies use robot text scanners to look for keywords.


That's what I was thinking about including plain text for.

I saved the files in PDF format using the add on for Word 2007. It does allow you to select text.

Thanks for all the input.

 

[crinkles]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
But will some prospective employeers dislike the fact that they need to use Adobe just to read your resume ?


if they dislike it I wouldn't like ot be working for them or their archaic IT system.

PDF is the standard. I'd use it. eveyrone has a reader and its not that difficult to get.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Send it by snail mail and include a ten dollar bill. Then it goes to the top of the pile.