Southern California Careers / Dream Jobs : Cyberspace Etiquette

In an environment where digital resumes have replaced bond paper and black ink, the on-line job search has an etiquette of its own.

Margaret Riley, the circulation and computer resources librarian at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., has put together a guide for finding a job on the Internet. Her guide, titled “Employment Opportunities and Job Resources on the Internet,” is available on line on the World Wide Web.

Riley urges job seekers to follow three rules to avoid mistakes:

* Read electronic job postings carefully. Some companies list openings on line but do not want to receive responses that way.

* Send both a cover letter and a resume--but send them as one file. Two electronic messages will get separated en route.

* Always transmit files in the simple text format known as ASCII. Companies are not going to take the time to decode documents created in more complex word-processing formats.