A STANFORD MBA. An internship with Sen. Important Pants. Prior experience helping lepers in Africa and solving complex equations for Chinese tax firms. It doesn't matter whether you have supernaturally good work experience — if your resume doesn't artfully present your attributes, you might not land that new job. Just ask Elle Woods.

Yeah, the Chihuahua-toting, pink-loving heroine of "Legally Blonde" — that's the one.

In the 2001 flick, there's a scene at Harvard Law School in which faculty members are poring over the not-so-dumb blonde's application, trying to determine whether to admit Woods. They come across a bullet on her resume where she's described her stint as a faux fur bikini designer as a stint in "philanthropy for animal rights." Some academics are aghast, but enough of them are impressed that Woods gets in. Score one for a well-written resume, right?

"It's all a matter of focus and the way we want to tell a story," says Martin Yate, a Savannah, Ga.-based career coach and author of "Knock 'Em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide" ($10, Adams Media). "'I design faux fur bikinis' doesn't mean anything, but to say 'I'm a philanthropist for animal rights' tells a different story."

Today, conveying a distinctive, compelling career tale with your give-me-a-job documents is becoming increasingly important, since the number of resumes posted online is staggering. Careerbuilder.com alone currently has more than 26 million on its site.

And whether you're a starry-eyed 20-something trying to land an entry-level position at the widget factory or a disillusioned baby boomer looking to switch careers after several decades in the trenches, the question remains the same: How do I get my resume to stand out?

If you post your info on a site like Careerbuilder.com or Monster.com, Yate says to first consider how such sites' spiders (retrieval programs) will scan it before it's even seen by human eyes. Such database searches are conducted like Google ones, which means resumes with the most keywords repeated most frequently are given the highest ranking — and are more likely to get plucked out by your dream company's human resources honchos.

People seeking job candidates, says Yate, "type in the word 'accountant,' and get a dialogue box which gives us a 100 keywords or key phrases. We click on the ones we think apply and add some other words that are relevant to our specific job." In order to have your resume fished out of a sea of millions of other documents, you'll need it to stand out. It's the same sort of weeding-out process that happens when you mail out an old-fashioned paper CV.

Sound daunting? It doesn't need to be. Reviewing and comparing postings for similar jobs you're interested in will not only give you an idea of what an employer is looking for, but it'll also show what sort of language they're using to describe it. It's vital to use the jargon of the industry you're hunting in — it makes you seem educated and knowledgeable about the field. This means a resume for a retail position shouldn't sound similar to a CV for that of a bank executive.

"You want to create a resume that portrays you as an insider, not as an outsider," says career consultant Abby M. Locke, who runs D.C.'s Premier Writing Solutions (Premierwriting.com). "If you're not creating a resume with a strong focus or target, then, essentially, you're presenting the picture of 'I'm an outsider trying to get in' rather than 'I'm a part of this team; you just need to bring me on board.'"

Some people have so much trouble tailoring their resumes to fit the jobs they want that they end up consulting a pro like Locke. After applying for several positions with no response in the middle of last year, Babu Kuttal, a 38-year-old Manhattan IT executive, found Locke's Web site and decided to hire her. After filling out an extensive questionnaire and spending 40 hours filling out questionnaires and speaking with Locke on the phone, he received a resume draft in his e-mail inbox. (Locke's rates start at $185 for a one-hour coaching session.)

"My previous resume had a lot of technology acronyms — I used Java. This one was very English savvy, packed with a lot of facts," says Kuttal. "She aligned my resume like a progressive story, from my first career to my last, so you feel like you're reading a good novel summary."

Kuttal sent the new resume to four companies and got four interviews. He started his new gig as an IT executive with a major New York City financial services firm last month.

"I'm a big proponent of clients' determining their personal brand," says Locke. "They're then able to walk away with a strong understanding of their qualifications and expertise, and really have a handle on what they're able to offer a new employer."

Branding yourself doesn't mean asserting too much personality via a resume. An employer probably doesn't care whether you're a great Indian curry cook — unless you're up for a job in the kitchen at the Bombay Club. And the fact that you run an iguana rescue in your spare time will probably impress only the HR department of PETA.

Instead, that PDF you thrust into cyberspace (or that piece of paper you stuff in the mail) should detail the particular strengths that qualify you for the job, says New York City-based Lily Taylor, who dispenses resume advice via online chat as her alter ego Super Writer Girl (Superwritergirl.com). She charges $100 to write a resume.

"Sometimes people are, like, 'Oh! I want to tell them that I love golfing, and I have three dogs and two cats and a turtle!' And I'm, like, 'You're a professional sales manager. I don't think they're going to care,'" says Taylor, who appears on her site as a caped, comic book-style super heroine, grasping what very well could be a rolled up resume.

The new resume rules also suggest that if you're applying for five different jobs, you can't just use one generalized CV. You may need to tweak the one you have each time you send it out, mentioning your volunteer usher stint at Arena Stage when applying for that gig at the Kennedy Center or leaving out your short tenure as an NRA intern if angling for a position in Sen. Ted Kennedy's office. It's about focusing on the particulars of a job with each resume and making sure past career achievements convince that new boss that you'd fit into and succeed at that company.

Eeek! How can you do that on just one page?

Take a deep breath, and stop converting everything into teeny, tiny fonts. "There used to be that old rule of one page for every 10 years of experience, and no more than two pages. That isn't relevant anymore," says Yate. "Although the essence of it is still true: You should cut to the chase. You don't want too much information."

With that said, Yate has worked with vice presidents whose multi-faceted and lengthy careers warrant resumes that are five to seven pages long, with a professional addendum (two pages) and a leadership profile (another two pages). Holy papyrus! Still, it's vital not to believe that a long, varied career gives you the freedom to write a novella: Points still need to be succinct and clear, and the first page still needs to pack a punch.

"What hasn't changed is how people screen resumes once they get in front of human eyes," says Yate. "We have a pile in front of us; we hate reading them. We spend 45 seconds to a minute reading it our first time. Ninety percent of that time is spent on the first page. What does that tell us? The first page is like the headline or the first paragraphs of a newspaper story. Catch their attention, and show that 'wow, this guy gets it; this girl can do this job,' then the rest of the resume will get read."

When it comes to reading, don't forget your audience. Younger applicants should even take the vision of their resume-reviewers into consideration when choosing a font size. "You might be able to read 10-point just fine," says Yate. "But the woman or guy who has been slaving in a high-rise salt mine for 15 years looking at computer screens is probably as blind as a bat."

He suggests avoiding type smaller than 12-point and using a sans-serif font ("one that is plain and doesn't have curlicues in it"). Locke says it couldn't hurt to avoid overused fonts like Times New Roman and Arial — they look dated and dull, and might get passed over.

Taylor thinks job-hunters sometimes go overboard decorating their resumes. "I recently wrote [a resume] for a person who does entertainment for kids, like a magician or a clown, and he had balloons all over his resume, but he was applying for a professional industry job. He wanted his personality to come through," she says. "I stuck with a basic black shadowed border and his name in a fun font. I left it very simple. He needed to calm down a bit."

Other applicant faux pas these pros have seen, which you should not repeat: a candidate who used all caps throughout his WHOLE RESUME; another man who spelled his name wrong on his header and then corrected it by scratching it out and rewriting it.

In the age of spell-check, any typo on a resume means it is destined for the trash.
Once the resume has been written, the next question is how to send it, and in what form? An Adobe PDF via e-mail is the safest method. "It's easy, simple and can't be changed," says Taylor. "It's polished." And while most resumes are e-mailed these days, sometimes it doesn't hurt to be a little old-school and send a copy via snail mail, too — particularly if you work in academia or a creative field (architecture, photography, journalism) in which a packet of clips is still relevant.

"I guarantee, when you get mail, you open it first thing or at the end of the day; you do it as a little break," says Yate. "You still open mail! I tell people, if you're sending someone a letter by e-mail, get someone's name and send it to them by mail as well.

Send it in a large, flat envelope — it sticks out more. Priority mail is like three and a half bucks, but if it's a job you can really do, and you want to stand out, that's mostly to get it into the man or woman's hands that has the hiring decision, and it's most likely to get opened and read."

So, should the paper that resume is printed on be fancy parchment, or will plain white stock do? Don't go overboard, says Taylor. "Don't do it on scented pink paper, and you're good." Stay away from regular printer paper and opt for weighted resume stuff instead. Which is a lesson even Elle Woods would appreciate.

Photos by Marge Ely/Express

Posted by Kris Coronado at 12:00 AM on January 16, 2008
Tagged in Getting Ahead , Lifestyles , Top Stories