Resume search is important for the job interview, too. Most of us are more comfortable moving into unfamiliar territory if we have a map of the terrain. When you have researched an individual company to tailor your resume, you know a great deal about its products-- services, mission, philosophy, revenues, and so forth. This information can be very valuable in preparing good questions and answers for initial and subsequent interviews. Employers like candidates who are savvy enough to do some homework before their first meeting. In customizing your resume, you are pursuing two objectives simultaneously: You are creating a powerful written sales tool, and you are developing a verbal testament about why a specific employer should hire you. If you think of your resume-writing process as the best preparation for a rigorous interview session, you will be more likely to give it the time it deserves.

Replying to all resumes would be the polite thing to do, but often it simply isn't practical. If a company receives 200 responses for an ad, or experiences a continual deluge of unsolicited resumes, it would spend an inordinate amount of time sending acknowledgments. If you really want a receipt for your resume, send a stamped, self-addressed postcard asking for one. If you make it easy, the human resources department will comply.

If your resume will be read by a resume scanning program for key words, it's absolutely imperative that those key words be included in your text. Consequently, tailoring your resume to an ad, networking recommendation or job description is probably even more important than if a person were doing the initial screening. In this respect people-scanned and computer-scanned resumes are very similar. However, because some computer scanners have difficulty reading vertical lines, italics and unusual type fonts, techniques you might use to grab the attention of recruiters can be misinterpreted by a computer. If your resume is likely to be scanned, keep the format simple and use only boldface type and bullets to highlight major points.