Let Word be your resume professional

Several years ago, I bit the financial bullet and paid a professional resume writer to rework my resume. My self-esteem soared as the resume professional cajoled and wheedled years of skills and work history out of me and molded them into the resume of a communications professional someone might just hire. I barely recognized myself on paper, but all of it was true, and I began to look at my career in a whole new way.

I highly recommend using a proven resume writer at least once in your career, but most of us can't afford to shell out hundreds of dollars annually to have a professional tell us how great we are. Enter, the Word resume template. A new resume format can sometimes serve the purpose of the paid professional by helping us look at our work history in creative new ways.

The key, as any good resume professional will tell you, is to revisit and update that resume regularly. Karen Hofferber, a resume professional with ResumePower.com updated her advice to job seekers in these five articles, each of which has an important tip to help you build your resume with Word 2010:

• Keep cover letters with your resume in Word
• Resumes for recruiters vs. resumes for employers: A question of length
• You found errors in your resume after sending it to an employer: Now what?
• Demystifying keywords: How (and why) to maximize keyword density on your resume
• Six steps to developing a great resume

Do you have your own Word tips for job seekers? Send them our way!

--Leslie H. Cole