Give Your Resume Proper Name (the attached document)

Here is my stock email reply to a job-seeker who emails me their resume with their attached document named resume.doc or resume.pdf  It is frankly unbelievable that I receive so many resumes from both paralegal and lawyer job-seekers with poorly named resumes.  If anything, being a paralegal or a lawyer is being a document manager.  And people - if we can't get the most basic (and important) document named properly - give it up.  I know I can't "change the world" on this topic - but I can try.

Dear -------,

So, as I thank you for emailing us your resume.   Do you mind if I offer you some real-world advice on the topic of document (resume) naming skills?    OK, great.

The first thing I noticed was that the attached document (your resume) that you emailed to us is not named very well.  It has the generic name of "resume.doc"   That would be like working in a law firm and naming an important client document will.doc or contract.doc or letter.doc

You will learn soon as a lawyer/paralegal/law clerk that how well you name a document – be it a brief to a judge, a memo to an associate, or a contract for a client – is a most vital skill – for many reasons.  Such as – for later locating the document or by not having to “open” the document first to know what it is and whose document it is – things like that.

Many other jobseekers also email their resumes to us and some (most!) of those documents have the exact same name, "resume.doc," or similar.  You may not have thought about this - but before we can save and store resumes with similar names, we (the recipient) are forced to take the extra step of re-naming the document to something more identifiable (to the sender) and unique.

Plus – if I save to my computer a resume called resume.doc – my word processing software (MS Word) will automatically ask me if I wish to over-write that document (the newer resume that just arrived) and replace an older version of the resume (presumably from a previous sender), so you can imagine the trouble that would cause.

Here is a solution/option/recommendation.  An excellent example of a properly and uniquely named resume would be: "Mary.Worth.2010.resume.doc" for instance.  [.pdf is OK too]  Without even opening the document, anyone she sends it to will know that it is her resume, even once it is detached from her email.  And besides - it just makes good sense.

So if you decide to give your resume document a more specific name (only a suggestion!), other employers will surely appreciate the effort and so will we.  And, more important - you will look like a real expert to a possible future employer.  So if you do decide to (re)name your resume more properly, please email it back to us.

Lastly, I give this advice not merely for my sake, though it does help us manage and store candidate resumes immensely.  I offer this advice to you – a job seeker, in that it will improve how your document-naming skills are viewed by possible future employers.

Sincerely,

Curtis Linder