Between all the job boards out there and the mobile friendly websites, it’s more common now for candidates to apply to jobs from their phone (or other mobile device). However, what happens when you get a request directly from a hiring manager or HR rep? In this case, you’re not signed into a job board that has your resume saved in the profile. You need the ability to send the resume from your phone.
The smart phone challenge
While smart phones are becoming more adept when it comes to attaching picture files to emails, there are still many cases where you just don’t have a way to save a Word or PDF file on your phone. So in cases where you can’t, what do you do? Should you just wait until later when you’re at a computer? This could work, but things today work at warp speed. When it comes to fulfilling a request for a resume, sooner is better. And what happens if you’re out of town and won’t have access to your home computer for a couple days?
Time for a solution
So clearly, the best solution is to make sure you have access to your resume from your smart phone or mobile device. And happily, you have some options here. For example, you can have your documents saved in Google Drive. This costs nothing at all. The quickest way to share a document is to send a link. Of course, that often assumes recipients have Google and can open the link from their account. Many of us are open to Google links. However, there are still some out there who are hesitant or who just don’t have a Google account from which to open your link.
But Google has a plan
If you have the Google Docs app, you can open your resume and choose to export it as an attachment as either a Word or PDF file. Problem solved! Another option would also be to use Dropbox. I’m even finding that more and more job boards will allow users to share their resume via Dropbox.
And there’s still another option
And last is the more old-fashioned work-around that I used to employ all the time. I would either email myself every version of my resume, or I would search my sent items to find the resume version I wanted to share. From there, I hit “forward” on the message but arrange the whole thing to look like a new email. In the subject, I even delete the “FW” prefix that usually populates. When done, hit send, and your resume is submitted. That method is a bit less sophisticated than some of the others, but it gets the job done just fine.
Written by Adam Lafield, Recruiter & Marketing Specialist