Submitting a Resume: Email, Fax, Mail

Wrote winning resume and cover letter. Read great job notice. Ready to submit, but wait—which is the best method to reach the hiring agency?

Unless a human resources office posts a requested method of receipt, job seekers must determine how to best impress the hiring office in a timely manner. The choice comes down to email, fax or mail. Consider these pros and cons.

Email
Email seems the natural choice for submitting a resume, but is it the best choice.

Pros: speed and delivery. Email arrives instantaneously and the document (one printed by the hiring office) retains format. It’s convenient and free.

Cons: easily dismissed. Even if your email does make it to the inbox rather than the spam folder, an email is too, too easy to delete and requires some work on the human resource staff to download and print. Should the hiring office receive numerous emails, plus resumes in other forms, an emailed resume may get no further than the recycle bin.

Fax
Pros: speed and automatic print. Faxes are received in a matter of moments and only require human resource staff to pick them up from the in-tray.

Cons: fuzzy formatting and cost. Faxes do not always print cleanly and may be difficult to read. Barring a home-fax, faxing a resume requires a trip to the copy center and per page fee.

Mail
Pros: format and costs. A hard copy document is less likely to be automatically dismissed. Postage costs are less than fax fees.

Cons: time. By the time a mailed resume arrives, the pool of interview applicants may have already been selected.

Best Bet
Consider a fax/mail combo to ensure timely receipt and legibility.
If a telephone number is published call the hiring agency to ensure your document was received and always, always carry extra copies to the interview.