You have been trained to prepare a Resumé that is attractive to look at, easy to read and as catchy as your particular profession will allow, but the rules are changing due to the role played by the internet and digital processing. Your Resumé must now also be "attractive" to a computer.

Even in the 85% of the job placements in which networking plays an important part, the internet may still be used to communicate your qualifications to the hiring official. Although I still like to present candidates Resumés to client companies in MS WORD format, the job boards, Resumé banks and Resumé data bases may handle a Resumé in plain text format only. That means you may need both a WORD version and a plain text formatted Resumé. The Resumé must eventually look neat when it is printed out for the interview, if you are lucky enough to get an interview, but up until that time it is important that it is "attractive" to a machine.

For the plain text format version, remember that you want a machine to read the Resumé and be able to interpret and retrieve it successfully. Also search engines tend to stumble over graphic, unusual fonts, bullets, indents, strange characters and particularly the MS Word "table" format that is currently being recommended by so many of the Resumé writing services and outplacement firms.

For plain text formatted Resumés, very simple and straightforward documents are best. Here are some formatting tips to enable machine analysis and the basic internet transmission of your Resumé:

• Use only Helvetica, Arial, or Times Roman Fonts.
• Use 10, 12, or 14 Point Size Fonts.
• Make sure the entire document is left justified.
• Set margins for approximately 65 characters per line.
• Use spaces or dashes to emphasize text.
• No bullets. No wing dings or special characters.
• No graphics.

Even for your MS WORD formatted Resumé:

• Make sure all of the important key words are spelled out in their most commonly used form for the computer to pick them out of all of the other text.
• If your company uses unusual job titles, also offer the most commonly used titles in parenthesis.
• Use a familiar Resumé layout and avoid using uncommon placements for your name, address, telephone numbers, employers' names, job titles and academic accomplishments.
• Avoid "insider" acronyms and abbreviations.

Follow these tips and your Resumé may look a little bland but the internet will love it and it may stay in a form that you might even recognize it.