Tips for jobseekers

If you send in your resume as a Word document, and you had the "track changes" feature on for redlining - accept all the changes and render it final before you send the document. Unless of course you want the reader to see all the things you deleted. Presumably you deleted them for a reason, no?

Better yet - PDF.

I know, I shouldn't hold things like this against candidates. But it's hard not to. It's certainly a lesser sin than neglecting to follow the application instructions, or calling me to ask questions that are CLEARLY answered in the posting. ("I see the closing date is January 31, but can you tell me when the closing date actually is?") It's also a lesser sin than writing a cover letter that has nothing, not even one little sentence, that expresses why you're interested in this job specifically - I mean, it if you can't be bothered to add one customized sentence to your otherwise patently boilerplate letter, how interested can you really be?

And seriously - don't send your photo. Unless it's for an acting or modeling job, just - don't. And serious job applications do not come from people with email addresses like cutiepoo@yahoo.com. Unless your name is in fact Cutie Poo, which would be very, very unfortunate.

Twenty resumes later, edited to add:

• Don't send two or three versions of your resume - "attached is my functional resume, and my business resume, and my community service resume!" The person receiving your application is having to open, read and print many, many documents. Don't add unnecessary clicks.
• Don't set your electronic documents so they can't be opened from an email, and have to be saved. That's just more clicks. More clicks = bad.
• Don't set print margins so tiny that most printers can't accomodate them. Your stuff will print crappy, and the computer will ask me whether I want to print despite the tiny margins, and that means - say it with me, people - MORE CLICKS.
• Proofread!