Traditionally people have emailed their resume to their friends, family, and associates in hopes that they will pass it along to some decision maker who is looking for someone with their set of skills.  The idea is great and makes a lot of sense, the problem is that emailing file attachments comes with problems:

  1. If you email a Word document, there is no guarantee that it is going to look like it did on your computer.  Emailing the document can wreak havoc on the formatting that you spent hours getting just right.  The end result is that someone pulls up your file and it looks like a jumbled mess of weird fonts and indention.
  2. The “solution” may seem to be to convert your document to a PDF and then send it.  This is a better option, but many people don’t have the software or know how to convert their document to a PDF and at the end of the day you are still sending an attachment….
  3. Why attachments are bad:  People are rightly cautious when it comes to opening an attachment.  Attachment can have all sorts of viruses and malware associate with them.  They may read your email, but a lot of people will never open your attachment for security reasons or because they didn’t even see it at the bottom of the page.
  4. Finally, if someone does open your attachment what do they do with it.  They have to save it on their hard drive and if they do decide to pass it along to someone, they have to remember where they saved and what the file name is, then attach it to the email they are sending.  The more steps and the more difficult you make it for someone to pass your resume along, the less likely they are to do it.