Everyone's personal employment history is different, but most resumes follow a pretty standard format. Microsoft and the job-hunting site Monster have teamed up to make available a bunch of free resume templates for Microsoft Office that'll get you started. See the Product Availability section at the end of this article for a link.

Many employers no longer accept resumes submitted by snail mail. They usually want you to email them in or upload them to a submission page. Some employers will accept files sent to them in Word format, but others will require you to submit a PDF file. Adobe's Acrobat can be expensive, but there are other choices.

Adobe offers a subscription PDF creation service, CreatePDF, for $9.99 a month. If you'd rather not pay anything for PDF creation, you can go to PDF Online, and they'll generate your PDF at no charge. And, if you'd prefer to use an application that installs on your computer, you can use PrimoPDF, which is also completely and totally free.

Once you've created your resume, check with the prospective employer to determine how they want that resume submitted. Many of them will not accept attachments, many have upload sites, and some will ask you to simply paste your resume from Word into the body of the email message.

And there you go, three great tips for getting that next job!

Joe is a ZATZ associate editor. Prior to this job, he was customer support manager for the FileFlex database engine.