Posted on September 15, 2009 - by Alex

Tools For Job Hunting – Part 2

In the last article, I talked about BrazenCareerist and LinkedIn—two career-oriented social networks that one can leverage to develop connections and opportunities. In the second part of the “Tools For Job Hunting” series, I’ll review some tools that helped me to develop and promote my resume.

Prelude

When I got laid off, searched my hard-drive for my resume. There it was, in all it’s glory: Alex_Resume.doc, created in Microsoft Word, using the “Professional-Style Resume” template. Although I had kept it current, something told me it was time for a change. I knew there would be plenty like it crowding the desks of hiring managers across Wisconsin.

Emurse.com

I’m not quite sure how I heard about Emurse—I probably googled something like: “Resume Building Software.” Emurse turned out to be a tool where one could create a good-looking resume and publish it online, making it available for download in a sundry of formats. Not bad for being free. Here’s a summary of what one can do with Emurse:

• Build modular resumes, customize headings/subheadings, and the way they are ordered.
• Select from a handful of impressive-looking styles. The kind that don’t look like they were made in MS Word.
• Publish the resume online as a web-page, making it capable of being indexed by Google.
• Make the resume available for download via .DOC, .PDF, .ODT, .RTF, .TXT, .HTML, and .RSS. Just to be sure.
• Create multiple resume variants, and publish them all

I liked how simple and easy the site was to use. The customization options and templates rendered a clean resume with maximum compatibility.

I didn’t like that you once you created the output, there wasn’t much else to do. One just hope google crawls it and doesn’t put it into the sandbox.

The Verdict: Emurse.com is a good tool for making a clean resume and publishing it online.

Winway Resume Deluxe

Is a software program I didn’t care for. It has a similar approach at building your resume from blocks like Emurse, but way, way more awkward. After building a resume, Winway allows one to select from about a million different templates/styles. Sorting through them was like wandering drunk through a really bad art gallery. Nonetheless, here’s what you can do with this gem:

• Build a resume. Functional and Chronological. Yippee.
• Write a cover letter
• Export all of these to a .PDF
• Email Resumes out

I liked that you could create a resume and export it to the formats that are important. I enjoyed the smooth uninstall from my hard-drive.

I didn’t like that Winway Resume Builder makes an effort to insult my intelligence. I’m talking about the video coaching feature, where I got tutored on how to interview well by watching 1980s role-plays of really bad actors in spiffy re-encoded quality. That’s not how people behave.

The Verdict: You might as as well spend the $39.95 on some cologne. It’ll make you more attractive.

If You Need to Revamp Your Resume

I think Emurse.com is worth a look, if nothing more than the chance it could wind up being a Google search result for your name. Its simplicity and ease-of-use can have done in 30 minutes and moving on to the next thing. Emurse will even email you if anybody visits or downloads your resume. Has anyone else out there tried either one of these two resume-builders?