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They can’t exceed 80 characters. ASCII text doesn’t wrap to the next line. You have to make your own breaks (like with getting interviews). Always use Left Alignment (technically known as flush left), not centered.

What about fonts?

It doesn’t matter. The display will default to the user or offeror’s basic font.

How can I line up text?

You can’t do this with any predictability. If you must, use spaces. That’s the way to center as well. Keep tapping the space bar. The displayed results will depend on how the offeror’s computer is set up.

Will I destroy the features my resume software creates?

Absolutely—as with the spacing, only more so. You can’t even use bullets. (I don’t recommend bulleted lists anyway. But if you must use one, you can use hyphens.)

All Facts and No Frills

ASCII text eliminates all the subjectivity of resume graphics. This places your resume on a level playing field with all of the jillions of others the offeror receives.

Follow the guidelines in Do 5 and Do 6, and your resume will be coming across the offeror’s screening screen in bright colors. If you could see what most ASCII resumes look like, you’d realize this in an instant. That’s exactly what an offeror does.

After you submit this ASCII resume, keep a copy. Use it the next time an employer requests it. You can also paste it into any resume text field in any online form. (If you try pasting from your Word version, you’ll see why I did this Do for you.)

ASCII and you shall receive—instantly!

Do 8: Getting You Covered with the Better Letter

Resume cover letters are a great interviewgetter!

You just have to know the right times to use them.

Peeking Under the Covers

I’ll get to the content of the better letter in a minute. But let’s peek under the covers of almost all cover letters first.

When it comes to resumes, resumania reigns. Average Jobjoes research, study, draft, redraft, rewrite, cut, paste, scan, copy, diddle in dictionaries, thumb thesauruses, and otherwise quite literally drive themselves crazy with these nonsensical pieces of paper. Go to any high school or college library, any reference section of any public library, any copy center, any computer bank, any career center—almost anywhere they hide. It’s as though the effort bears some relationship to the results.

Those people could actually be interviewing! With the publication of Instant Interviews that insanity can finally be clinically diagnosed and instantly treated. Good for you!

If you were here, I’d show you my battle scars. I tried to help folks when I wrote The Resume Makeover. It was the first—and is still the only—book ever written that offered a free diagnostic of the reader’s resume.

My idea was that they’d read the book, follow the directions, then send us the resume for a written critique and return. We were so excited about that one. For the first time, we’d actually produce a resume book that would get someone a job other than the author. The book was an instant bestseller.

If I could show you the van Goghs that came in, you’d van-go crazy too. And that was after supposedly following the baby-step examples in the book! (The idea helped a lot of people get hired, but only after we personally coached them on how to write and then use the resume.)

Now, I’m teaching you the valuable lessons we learned. Among them is that unless you have a properly drafted resume (Do 5), covering it with a letter will not work.

Our cat Sylvan used to do that with a newspaper. He was very intelligent, so I don’t know who he thought he was kidding. We still saw the lump and detected an unsavory aroma.

So, the story with cover letters is: Do them right and they’ll help a good resume. Do them right and they’ll cover a bad resume like that newspaper. Do them wrong and save your postage.

Writing the Better Letter

The first thing to ask yourself is “What am I trying to accomplish with a cover letter?” If it’s focus, you must know who and what you’re aiming at. That means the specific offeror and the specific