In our post-industrial society, technical services are the dominant economic activity. Information and technical knowledge is demanded in the workplace causing higher education and professional training to become prerequisites for any career in Information Technology. With all the skills needed to acquire a career, it is imperative for one to be able to write a brief written summary of his/her education, work experience, and accomplishments in order to convey to the recruiter that he/she is the most qualified person for the position offered. This is the essence of the resume.
There are three different formats to consider when writing a resume. The paper resume is the most traditional form and accepted by most employers. In the Management Information Systems (MIS) career market, "a growing number of employers are asking applicants to send in their resumes in a scannable format" said Kerri Bennett (Bennett, personal interview, September 20, 2003), a recruiter for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. This means that the resume will be submitted into a computer database, so the resume must be written in a way that it can be read by the computer. For most employers who request scannable resumes, if the document does not fit the format requested, in other words cannot be scanned properly, they are simply thrown out with the rest of the company garbage. According to an article called Develop the Ultimate Scannable Resume by Jake Jamieson, some tips to create a successful scannable resume are to have two versions of your resume. One version should be in a regular format and the other should be scannable (Jamieson, 2003). Jamieson also stresses that it is important to understand a scanner cannot read italics, underlines, columns, boxes, bullets, symbols, or pictures. Scannable resumes should be written in plain text with a normal font (Jamieson, 2003). The last point Jamieson makes is to write a resume in the simplest form possible.