Question:
I have my resume online at [ http://www.guymacon.com ].
It has a number of hyperlinks to pages with details on
various jobs that I have had.
I have recieved several requests from recruiters for a
copy in Microsoft Word format. I would like advice on the
best way to do this.
If possible, I want the person who read it using Word to
have the same basic user experience that the web page user
has - I want the hyperlinks to work and the images to be
visible.
I also want it to be one single MS-Word document. If I
send multiple documents, some will get lost.
I have Office 2000 and have no problem with buying a
commercial program if that's the best way to do this.
What's the best way to do this?
Answer:
-Copy/paste will get the document over nice enough. Word may be terrible
about *creating* HTML, but it at least understands enough for you to
view your page in just about any browser and copy all your vital
statistics. All the urls will have to be changed (for example, article won't work, you'll have to
type in http://www.example.com. It might disrupt the flow of the
document, but that's the price you pay), and the pictures will display
in (mostly) the right places.
But ... thirteen pages? That's what it comes down to when I copied all
your resume details to an MSWord doc. A single page I could understand,
maybe two to five on the very outside, but ... thirteen?
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, though, and besides, you didn't ask for a
critique. I was just under the impression that a resume should ideally
be short & sweet.
And, er ... what's stopping these requestors from hitting the very nice,
very simple, very pretty print button available on most browsers?
-The best way is to give them a Word experience, not a web experience,
since that is what they asked for. Rebuild your resume as a proper
Word doc (if there is such a thing...) in expected resume format.
Effective communication is the eliciting of a desired response. In
your case, it should be "Here's an interview appointment", not "Wow, a
printed document full of underlined text!"
-I am planning on requesting a site review, but I want to
correct every error I can find and also fix the couple of pages that
are under construction first.
But as long as you asked...
Think of the resume as being the one short main webpage (around two
pages long if printed out) and the others as hyperlinked documents
for those who wish to read more details. That, by the way, is what
I want the MS-Word version to be like: a short resume in Word format
that has hyperlinks to detail pages. If I just cut and paste, I get
what you got; everything in one long document that is too long for
a resume. That's not what I want.
>And, er ... what's stopping these requestors from hitting the very nice,
>very simple, very pretty print button available on most browsers?
Recruiters put resumes into databases and search the database for
matches to jobs. If they have a job requiring, say. an Electronics
Engineer with experience with electrohydraulic actuators in Los Angeles,
I might be the only match. I am finding about 80-90% of them want an
ASCII copy, and about 10-20% of them want a MS-Word copy. Years ago
it was ASCII and Wordperfect.
