ELECTRONIC RESUMES An electronic resume can be either a chronological or a functional resume formatted to read well when scanned and/or searched by optical (or in some cases very low paid human resource assistants) systems. Some large employers use electronic resume processing system to handle large volumes of resumes and send them to data bases to be searched later. Some just scan the resumes or have low paid office workers look for key words and then discard the resume when one or more key words are not there. Currently many companies are looking for 11 matches out of 10 keywords but that is beginning to change as jobs become more plentiful.
Actually writing a electronic resume is not very different that the chronological resume presented in my earlier blogs. All you have to do is remove the underlines, bullet points and most of the bold statements and save it in text or .rtf format. Then add a keyword heading right under the contact information and begin listing all of the skills you think might be important. If you are a PET blown bottle technican your keyword statement might look like this:
KEYWORDS
Experienced in the operation and setup of Sidel, Krupp, Uniloy and Jomar bottle blow molding machines. Trained in the operation of Graham wheel blow molding machines and Husky injection molding machines. Can program and debug Allen-Bradley and Fanuc PLC's. Have set up and programmed almost all robots. Very familiar with gas assist molding. Worked with PET, HDPE, and PP plastics to make bottles. Worked with medical devices under GMP regulations in a ISO 9001 facility. Received Lean Manufacturing and Just-In-Time (JIT) Inventory Control training. Etc., etc. etc. ..........
Take care to list every skill you can think of because leaving just one out might be the difference between being called in for the job and not being called in. You might think this is silly because you already have these key words in your resume. You would be suprised to know that as a third party recruiter, one of the main things I do is talk to the candidates and expand on the skills already listed on the resumes with the HR or hiring manager. Very often the Human Resource people either fail to see the skill listed (they are half blind from looking at hundreds of resumes) or they believe the listed skill is outdated or you have minimal experience and they want a lot of experience, e.g. design experience with Pro Engineer.
Do electronic resumes really work or is it just a way for large companies to manage a flood of candidate paper and emails? If applying to larger companies with over 100 employees, there is a good chance your resume will be scanned or searched once it is placed in the data base if an email. Any resume you post to an electronic resume job bank must be in a suitable electronic format so you might as well prepare one and you can't always know if the resume you send to a classified add is going into one of these databanks (think CareerBuilder).
11:05:42 AM 
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