How to Send a Cover Letter & Resume by Email

In today's competitive job market, many companies are turning to the Internet as a source to obtain an applicant pool and screen prospective employees. When submitting in an email format, it's important that the text versions of both your cover letter and resume be as clean, readable and professional as your original document prepared in word processing software (such as MS Word). By preparing a text version of your cover letter and resume, you can ensure that you always have a clean version readily available to email to prospective employers.

Things You'll Need

• A copy of your completed cover letter
• A copy of your completed resume
• A copy of the guidelines for submitting the resume via email
• Access to a computer
• Access to the Internet
• Access to an Internet email
• Access to word processing software (such as MS Word or Google Docs)

Instructions

Creating a Plain Text Version

1. Open your cover letter or resume in your word processing software. (Note: The instructions given are for MS Word. Most word processing software will follow a similar process.)

2. Click the "File" menu and choose "Save As."

3. Click the down arrow by "Save as type" and choose "Plain text" and then click "Save." The "Save as type" box should be located directly under the "File name" box. Please note that depending on your version of MS Word, the menu might say "Text only" or "Text" instead of "Plain text."

4. Choose the radial button labeled "Windows (Default)" from the "File Conversion" screen that appears and then click "OK." Close the cover letter.

Editing the Plain Text Version

1. Reopen the new text version of your cover letter or resume. Choose the radial button labeled "Windows (Default)" under the heading "Select the encoding that makes your document readable" from the "File conversion" screen that appears and then click "OK."

2. Observe that your cover letter or resume formatting (bold, italics, underlining, fancy fonts, etc.) has been lost. This is because the information is now in a text only format suitable for emailing. Review your cover letter or resume to see if it requires any rearranging or editing to make it more readable.

3. Revise the cover letter or resume to make it more readable. Replace words or headings that were formerly underlined, italicized or bold with ALL CAPS to draw emphasis to the words. Rearrange text as necessary. Replace bullets with asterisk or dashes. Save your changes.

Inserting the Plain Text Version

1. Open your email server, log in and choose "Create" or "Compose" (the term may be different depending on your email provider) to create a new email message.

2. Review the company guidelines for forwarding email cover letters and resumes. Ensure that the email is addressed to the correct email address at the company and that the subject line references the position for which you are applying.

3. Open the new text version of your cover letter. Choose "Select all" from the "Edit" menu. This will cause all of the text in your cover letter to be highlighted. Choose "Copy" from the "Edit" menu. This will automatically copy all of the information in your cover letter.

4. Go back to your email message and put your cursor at the beginning of the body of text. Choose "Paste" from the "File" menu to insert your cover letter into the email.

5. Open your resume and repeat step 3 and 4 above. Email your resume to your prospective employer.

Tips & Warnings

• Add your contact information directly below your electronic signature in the email so that a prospective employer may easily contact you.

• Place your text version of the resume below the cover letter in the email.

• Send a copy of the email to yourself as a test before submitting to ensure you made all the changes in plain text that you wanted to make.

• If your cover letter or resume is more than one page long, you may see a header inserted with the page number. Read your cover letter and resume carefully when converting to text format and remove any unwanted headers from the final version.

• Avoid using tabs in plain text. Use the space bar instead.

References

• The Riley Guide, "Preparing a Perfect Plain Text Resume," Susan Ireland, December 2009, The Riley Guide
• "How to Email Your Resume (A Step-by-Step Guide)," Right Management, Inc., a Manpower company, 2007