Paper versus Electronic Resumes: Their Relative Advantages and Disadvantages

The internet's pre-eminence as a job hunting tool has made mass resume mailings a thing of the past. Improvements in word processing technology, furthermore, have vastly improved the appearance and professionalism of the electronic resume.

Most employers and recruiters prefer to receive resumes as an email attachment. However, paper resumes are not a total anachronism. You may need to mail a resume to some small or very traditional employers. In addition, you should have several hardcopies on hand at a face-to-face interview.

Some companies require that applicants upload their resumes to their web site, so they can be screened and reviewed electronically. This will require that you create a text (.txt) file of your resume to upload, as the fonts, graphics, and special formatting used in word processing programs are not supported by most web applications. Most word processing programs allow you to save documents as text files. The new file should then be opened and double-checked for spacing and legibility.

Even when mailing a resume, you should keep in mind that the majority of paper resumes are scanned into a computer system and reviewed as an electronic document. If the scanned text is not legible, your resume may be rejected out of hand.

You can maximize the legibility of a paper resume by printing the document with black ink, on plain white paper. If you are faxing the document, you should additionally consider removing underlines, italics, or boldface in the text.

Most employers will not exclude candidates simply for using a paper or electronic resume. If the issue is in doubt, however, take your cues directly from the employer.