ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Exchange. Also known as US-ASCII, it is one of the most commonly used plain text formats. Converting your resume in ASCII format has several advantages. It reduces the size of resume and makes it universally compatible and easier to process by scanning softwares that are used by most job portals.
You can easily convert your standard resume into ASCII format. For this you should save a separate copy of your resume. If you do not have one, then prepare it first and then go for the conversion. This preparation should involve following points:
Remember that ASCII format does not support bullet points or lists. You should remove the bullet points by asterisk or dashes. Alternatively you can use a numbered list.
In ASCII format supported tabs can behave unpredictably in different formats and make the resume harder to process by automatic scanning software. It's better to remove tabs as well as hard returns altogether.
Similar to lists or bullets the tables are not supported in ASCII format. You need to replace them with simpler formatting. It's not a very good idea to use tables in general in an electronic resume as they frequently behave differently when viewed by different word processors.
Make sure that a single text size and font is used throughout the resume. The text size should be between 10 to 14 points. The font used should be a common one such as Arial or Times New Roman.
Remove all formatting such as underlines, bold and italic characters as they will not hold in ASCII format and may cause additional complications.
If your resume contains any design such as shading, graphic artwork, vertical or horizontal lines, images or colored text remove them. The resume should be as plain as possible.
Once all the bells and whistles have been removed your resume is ready for conversion. Just select and copy all the content and paste it in a plain text editor such as Notepad. It is very unlikely that you would get everything right the first time so make necessary adjustments in your plain text resume. One the resume is in a proper readable form all you have to do is save it in ASCII format. Some text editors such as Notepad may not have option for saving in ASCII format. In such case follow the following steps:
At the end of these entire steps you would have a plain text file containing your resume. An ASCII format resume is not a substitute of normal doc resume. It is not as attractive or well formatted. You can not emphasize certain points in the resume as with a Doc format resume. On the positive side, ASCII format can be read using any text editor and is well suited for softwares that are used for searching resumes matching a particular job profile.