I think my last post really said everything that's been on my mind lately in terms of resume-building and icky jobs and sticking with both, but I just can't emphasize enough how singularly important your resume is. If you're not getting any calls and you've applied to more than 200 jobs, then baby the most likely culprit is that old raggedy resume you've had since the year before last that you keep sending out like a brave little soldier, hoping it'll finally win you the battle and get you a job. I strongly recommend keeping that poor resume home for a bit and giving it a little bit of TLC. I'm not talking about adding a bunch of fluff or smudging the truth, but if there's anything on there you can make sound better, more sophisticated and polished, then think about doing it.

A good way to think of resumes and cover letters is like when you used to write persuasive papers in high school and college. Every single point (the responsibilities and skills in your resume) should mean something and should always support your thesis, which in this case would be your career objective. If you want a career where you work with customers and you put that in your objective, then make sure you emphasize the heck out of your customer service experience or your ability to work with people and serve others. You might want to de-emphasize or even remove things that don't support your objective or align with your summary of skills.

And then there's that service that every single professional essay writer out there will valiantly offer for the low price of a billon dollars: "I will tailor YOUR resume to the job you're looking for!" But you can do that too! Without giving somebody $500+ to switch around a few words on your resume. It just requires a little bit of research and a smidgeon of elbow grease. First, you simply take the job description and responsibilities of the job you want. Then you work on incorporating all of that into your resume. I guarantee you can re-word a part of your original resume to make it sound like at least one of the responsibilities or descriptors for the job you want. Job descriptions are free ways to check out what employers in your desired field are looking for. And if you can compile a little list of all the skills they want and responsibilities they want you to be able to perform, then you've got a bit of an edge over nearly every other person applying for those positions. Let those descriptions inspire your resume writing and try to put as many things from those descriptions (that align with your actual experiences) in your resume as possible.

And my last piece of advice, that you can really take or leave depending on what you're applying for, is to use the nicest resume template you can find. For some employers this won't be a big deal because they want you to submit your resume as a simple DOC. But there are tons of free templates out there that can make your resume really stand out to the discerning employer. Colors that pop on top of clean, creative arrangements are really appealing to look at and will likely garner you more attention from potential hiring managers.