Zap it to Me: E-mailing Your Resume
E-mail has revolutionized recruiting, just as it has impacted many other businesses. In the past, recruiters or potential employers waited days to receive a resume by snail-mail or received a fax copy, which was quicker, but messier looking. E-mailed resumes have several advantages over other forms of transmittal, such as allowing for clean copies to be printed each time, quick submission to the search firm’s clients via e-mail, quick and easy tailoring the resume for a particular position, and efficient storage and retrieval. Furthermore, many recruiters and legal employers have data-base management systems that will search the text of documents, so once your resume is entered into the computer system from your e-mail, it can be used to match your qualifications to particular openings. It also allows your resume to be sent to all parties who must review it without making lots of copies, which may end up lost under a stack of papers on a decision-maker’s desk.
But, as always, there are do’s and don’t to e-mailing your resume to a recruiter or potential employer.
- First of all, just as with the good old-fashioned hard copy, your resume must be error free and easy to read. You should use a large, businesslike font with plenty of white space to be easy on the eyes. Make sure to proofread your resume, paying special attention to names, dates, and phone numbers. Do this at least twice after you have spell checked it and before you send it out. Don’t use too many fancy gimmicks, which may not translate well on someone else’s computer system. For your recipients that have systems that can search your resume by key words, fancy fonts or formatting may not be recognized. If you use bullets, make them your basic dots or squares, no other icons, please.
- Do not cut-and paste your resume into the body of an e-mail text, as that process is likely to mess up your formatting. Rather, attach your resume as a separate document to a cover e-mail. Many recipients will want to save only your resume in their system, not your transmittal e-mail, and sending the resume as an attachment will facilitate that process.
- Send the cover letter and attached resume to a friend or two with different computer systems, to see whether it can easily be opened and whether anything was lost in translation. Also, send it to yourself to see how it looks. Note that, although many law firms still use WordPerfect, most businesses and recruiters use Word. Many computer systems can translate from WordPerfect to Word, but your formatting may be lost or scrambled. Similarly, not everyone can open documents created in Microsoft Works or similar non-business-standard software programs. Thus, it is preferable to send your resume in Word, if possible. Likewise, most business use PCs rather than MAC computers. Therefore, if you have a MAC, it is especially important to trial e-mail your resume first to make sure that everything opens and reads correctly on various other systems.
- Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, because you choose to use e-mail, you can omit a proper cover letter. Rather, type it in the body of your transmittal e-mail. Address it to a specific person and state the position for which you wish to be considered. All other rules and suggestions for the content of standard cover letters apply to your e-mail message, as well. (See: The Compleat Cover Letter) In the subject line, you might want to state the position you are seeking, such as “litigation associate candidate”. Do not try to be too clever such as saying something like “your search is over!”
- Is your screen name appropriate? A screen name that is fine for your friends, chat rooms, or personal ads may not convey the professional image you wish to present to a potential employer. Use some form of your name for easy identification.
- Make sure that you have updated virus protection on your own system before composing your resume and cover letter e-mail. That way, you will significantly reduce your chances of sending a virus on to a potential recruiter or employer. Most businesses have some virus scan system, and infected attachments will not be opened.
- If you are e-mailing your resume to a number of addresses, do not list them all in the “To“ section of your e-mail. It is poor form for your recipients to see all the others to whom you have submitted your resume. Send each submission separately or, at the very least, put your own address in the “To” section, and “Bcc” all of your intended recipients, so that the list does not show when your e-mail is received and opened. That trick may be a dead give-away that you are mass e-mailing your resume, however. If you are customizing each submission, as you should be doing, this will not be an issue.
- Do not try anything cute or unusual when e-mailing your resume. For example, do not type “re:” before the subject line to make it look as if you are replying to an earlier e-mail from your recipient. Likewise, do not mark it “urgent”. While it may be urgent to you, your submission is all in a day’s work for the recruiter or potential employer. Let your qualifications set you apart from your competition.
E-mail, used properly, can be a useful tool in your job search. It is becoming more accepted to submit resumes via your computer, and it can significantly streamline and speed up the process both for you, the candidate, and for the recruiter and potential employer.
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