An ASCII Resume
By Gina Watson
One of the most commonly used resume formats is the text resume, or in other words the ASCII resume. ASCII basically stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and can also be referred to as a plain-text resume or an electronic or Internet resume. It does not have any particular formatting which helps such a document to be used across all platforms.

When do you need to use an ASCII resume?
Resumes may be required in a variety of formats. However, numerous online resume banks request the submission of an ASCII resume. For any serious job seeker, putting together an ASCII resume should be an integral part of his or her job search pursuits since you can post this to almost any online job site or send it in e-mails. The best part is that all computers can download and read them. This type of resume should be used even while sending your resume by fax, because many times fax machines do not accept special characters and may lead to printing the document incorrectly.

Simple rules to remember while creating an ASCII resume:

• Use a simple font such as Arial or Courier.
• Do not use special characters, bullets, or tabs. Bullets may be replaced with an asterisk or a dash, and tabs can be done by simply using the space bar, where required.
• Make sure the resume has no borders, indentations, or text type in bold or italics.
• Capitalize all headers, names of companies or posts, or any information that needs to be distinguished from the rest of the text.
• Save the resume with a .txt extension.

Once you have applied the above mentioned rules, you will have created for yourself an ASCII resume that is plain and generic in appearance. Use this as and when required, and ensure that you have proofread it very carefully before pasting it onto the website.

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