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Are Paper Résumés on Life Support?
By Joyce Lain Kennedy

Dear Joyce: Now among the unemployed, I have to write a résumé for the first time in 14 years. A friend tells me that I should create an electronic, not a paper, résumé. Are paper résumés passé? -- P.C.

Dear P.C.: Paper résumés are alive and well and will survive for use in local or regional job markets during the next decade. Perhaps longer.

1999 SHRM Survey
The last serious look I took at this question was two years ago when I participated in a survey of the topic with the Society for Human Resource Management. At that time, half of the 582 responding members employed fewer than 250 employees. We found that approximately 58 percent of résumés started life as paper (sometimes converted by employers with scanning software to electronic status), while 41 percent were electronically made, finding life as e-mail offspring or Web page appendages.

Current Estimate
Neither SHRM nor I have revisited the résumé medium question, but researcher Gretchen Sturm, writing for a professional online publication, Electronic Recruiting Exchange, makes a thoughtful attempt to update the stats.

Sturm, who is knowledge manager for Recruitsoft, a leading company dealing in online résumés, asked Haystack Systems, a résumé outsourcing firm servicing larger companies, for a sample mix comparing last year's mix with this year's. This is the result:

Year 2000 percentages: paper, 70.5; e-mail, 29; fax, 0.5.

Year 2001 (to date) percentages: paper, 49; e-mail, 50; fax, 1.

Why Paper Survives
We can't be sure this limited sample translates across the job market. But it's easy to believe it's not far off, that there's an even split between paper and electronic résumés, especially for larger companies with a workforce more than 500 strong and for smaller technical firms. Sturm identifies some key reasons for paper's staying power. Here are six, which I paraphrase:

Look and Feel
Hiring managers and recruiters may need the tangible paper to feel, view and save. They like to read a nicely formatted, attractive résumé with bold, italics, underscoring and readable design elements rather than monotonous plain text.

Job Fairs
Company recruiters of real-space job fairs collect papers résumés to take to their offices.

Executives
Those who dislike reading computer screens or are slow to adapt want a piece of paper in their hands.

Advertising
Job ads that include snail mail addresses and fax numbers keep the paper alternative open.

Privacy Issues
Mistrust for the Internet as a medium of transmission, plus concern for a résumé being lost in the cyber pile, make a paper version seem more secure and direct to some job seekers. Professors, elite medical professionals, scientists and security specialists are especially cautious about online data.

Employee Referral Programs Companies that haven't converted employee referrals to electronic or Web processes often retain a form and instruct referring workers to clip a paper résumé to the form before submitting a name to the human resources department.

What to Do
Take a bicentric approach -- use paper and electronics. Start with a core résumé or worksheet, which has all your relevant self-marketing information.

Prepare a scannable paper résumé that scanning software can read. Make another, more handsome, version on quality paper to present at job interviews.

Prepare an Internet-friendly résumé for online use. Never send your résumé in an attachment unless the employer asks you to do so -- they may not be opened.

Note: Tailor any résumé version to a specific job opening when you can.

How the bioterror threat will impact résumés sent through the mail remains to be seen. If possible, call the employer and ask for résumé delivery preferences.

Dear Joyce: I noticed that (a major job board) charges $19.95 a month to add bold text and colorful icons to your résumé to make it stand out in the job board's résumé database. Should I pay for this service? -- J.R.

Dear J.R.: That's your call. The cost is no more than buying a good job search book each month. One possible downside: Employers are turned off by overly done, professionally printed résumés because they wonder if you're good, why you need excessive help in getting noticed.

Charging the job seeker is a distinctive change from practices of the past quarter century in which employers, not job seekers, pay for employment matches. But with job ad revenues down, we may see more job search companies working the other side of the financial street, trying to collect fees from job seekers. The money's got to come from somewhere, right?

Send career questions for possible use in this column to Joyce Lain Kennedy at Box 368, Cardiff, CA 92007, or e-mail her at jlk@sunfeatures.com. Sorry, the volume of mail makes personal replies impossible.