How to Send Resume and Cover Letter via E-mail

The thing to remember when doing any kind of job-seeking activities is to make whatever you do easy for the employer. If the hiring manager has to spend more time on your application than on others … guess what? He or she won’t; he or she will simply move on to the next applicant.

With those words ringing in your head, let me suggest that with sending cover letters and resumes over the Internet, you want to make it as easy as possible for employers to consider your application.

Thus, I suggest that you always send your cover letter and resume as unformatted text within the email message as well as formatted as attachments. Otherwise, you risk not being considered because some employers only want text, some only want formatted, some don’t open attachments for fears of viruses or other security reasons, and some may not be able to open your attachments because of software incompatibilities.

As with everything else, there are guidelines to follow when doing a text-based resume. I encourage you to read my article, Scannable Resume Fundamentals: How to Write Text Resumes. (Note that “scannable” resumes are rarely used anymore, but they are fundamentally the same as the text resumes employers prefer.)

You might also want to read my Tips for a Dynamic Email Cover Letter.