Do you love job offers? Resume tips that get you there

Are you planning a summer internship or preparing to enter the workforce when you graduate this year? If so, now’s the time to spit polish your resume and get it out there.

Don't wait until spring or, even worse, wait until you've actually graduated before you start sending your resume out to potential employers. Give yourself time to think about your skills and what type of job you're interested in. You know what they say, the early bird gets the worm.

Here are some tips and resources to help ease you into this manic process.

Resume writing advice

According to Karen Hofferber, a Certified Professional Resume Writer and senior resume writer at ResumePower.com, you can maximize keyword density in your resume by conducting online research.

She suggests you visit major job boards, such as Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, to discover what keywords are appearing in job descriptions that you’re interested in. Read more about Demystifying keywords: How (and why) to maximize keyword density on your resume.

In addition, Karen recommends that you create two different versions of your resume:

• A detailed, keyword-rich, and accomplishments-packed document for employers
• A hard-hitting, abbreviated version for recruiters

Get more advice from Karen in Resume for recruiters vs. resumes for employers: A question of length and 6 steps to developing a great resume.

Using resume templates

To get a leg up, create your resume using one of many resume templates available on Office.com. In coordination with Monster.com, Office.com put together a Career Center for Job Seekers that includes entry-level and college student resume templates.

Tips we’ve picked up along the way

And for more technical advice, here are some great features in Microsoft Word that can help make your resume stand out:

• Use Microsoft Word Building Blocks to create sections of a resume that you will use over and over. You should always tailor your resume to specific job descriptions, so having something prewritten that you can just pop in where appropriate is a time-saver.

• Make sure your resume is visually pleasing. Change page margins in Microsoft Word to balance the white space on the page.

Submitting your resume to employers

Another thing we should talk about is online submissions. Resume expert Kim Isaacs is currently blogging about resume writing on The Office Blog. In particular, Kim explains why a resume is worth the paper it’s printed on in her blog post Are hard-copy resumes obsolete?

For online submissions, you should save your document as a PDF file.

Amp up your work experience

Okay, maybe this is a shameless plug, but let me circle back to the conversation that prompted this blog post: the Microsoft internship program. If your resume is lacking work experience, you should consider applying for an intern position. And not just any internship, a Fortune 100 internship will improve your marketability. Another thing to keep in mind, an internship helps you network inside a company. Once you have your foot in the door, it makes it that much easier to get your resume into the hands of a hiring manager.

Want to see what it’s like to be a Microsoft intern? Take a look at the My Intern Life video series.

Have any advice or questions for fellow resume writers out there? Post a comment and let us know what you’re planning. And if you’re looking for a job, check out the Microsoft Careers Jobs blog.

--Jennifer Bost