All,
Many of my friends were hit today in Sun's layoff so this has prompted me to put together a "tips and tricks" email for some of my friends. These are tips and tricks that I've collected over 20 some odd years of consulting and hopefully you will find something in here that gives you an edge and helps to land a good job or contract.

Play the odds - job hunting is like playing the tables at Vegas. The more people that see your resume, the better odds you will have on getting a job you would like. This also means to send resumes out on jobs that may not be a perfect fit for you but that are in your genre, as they might just come up with an opening that fits you perfectly and there is your resume already so you will have a jump on the next guy.

Resume Emailing: I try to hit all the job boards early in the morning and email out my resume to all the new job listings. I keep track (by CCing myself) of all the resumes I send out and yes I do send out some on mass emails where I bcc 20-30 people. But the jobs that are a really good fit I take the time to personalize the email, and in the afternoon I follow up with a phone call to the recruiter to make sure they got my resume and hopefully in the process I may get to point out what qualities I might have that are particularly suitable for the job. I also make sure the recruiter knows I'm here if they have any questions at all, especially if they want to know what the skills mean, what key words to look for, etc. Yes I know that might sound like you are helping them to look for other people but they will remember this help, which leads me to the next item...

The recruiter is your friend. Whatever you do, be polite to the recruiter, these guys have a tough time of it trying to find people. They will remember someone who takes the time to be nice to them and to explain things to them. They will remember the person who doesn't get irritated that they called you for the wrong job. And that means that if they get a good job that fits you, then they will remember you. I make a habit of trying to return all emails and calls whether the job descriptions are applicable or not, and I also try to send them to the right person if I'm not a fit for the job. This way they call me back and remember they can get leads from me.
Tuesday Morning!!! - Studies show that you get the greatest response when you send out emails or call on Tuesday morning at 9:30-10:30 AM local time. This is because most people are in their offices and focusing on work related items (unlike Friday afternoon when they are browsing the web for tickets to a big game for Friday night or some such). So if there is a killer job out there or if you are going to use one of those mass resume emailers then by all means do it Tuesday Morning.
Job Boards - standard jobs boards like monster, dice, etc are good as well as finding regional job boards. But even more so now are the social networking websites like linkedIn, facebook, etc. Fill out your professional profile on all these sites, make sure to have a link to your resume. Join all the technical/professional groups that you can because these have become a great way of looking for the right people and many people will send out job reqs to the groups rather than to a recruiter these days.

Update your resume weekly! It goes without saying that it is a good idea to get your resume out to all the major job boards like dice, monster, etc. But go in and update the resume weekly so it doesn't get stale. No different than real estate buyers, the hiring companies think that something must be wrong with you if you are on the market too long. So by all means update your res weekly so it looks like it is fresh on the market. And if you have been looking for more than a month or two then that 2 month gap does not help your resume, find something to fill the gap. Whether it is showing that you are studying some new skill and taking a class (showing motivation) or going to work doing charity work for the local school or some such to fill the gap then this will help. Companies know you may have gaps, but it looks so much better when you find some motivation to fill it with something new even if you aren't employed.

The Resume - Nothing is more important than the layout and content of your resume. The hiring recruiters or managers see hundreds if not thousands of resumes a day. So - you have to find a way to get across the information you want in 2 ways - 1) it has to be searchable by the recruiters with all the pertinent buzzwords and acronyms, and 2) once someone reads it you must make it easy for your skills to jump out at them in less than 30 seconds of looking at your resume (studies say that is how much time you have to grab their attention). So - my recommendations (and this is from some top tech writers in the industry) are to have your first page include a quick 2-3 sentence summary of who you are and what you do (not objectives - people care more about what you have done than what you want to do), then a skills sheet that lists EVERYTHING you have ever dealt with and an asterisk by the skills you are actually good or strong with. And then you can go into the long dry story of each job on another sheet. They say keep the res to 2-3 pages but once you have a few years under your belt that can be tough. Here is a copy of my resume which might help your ideas on layouts: http://www.opennet.com/CarmodyQuinn.doc

Desperation! Job hunting is very much like dating and nobody likes desperation. Although let's face it; in a tough market with bills to pay we can feel desperate. So - remember a couple of things 1) this tough market cannot last more than a year or two. Even the great depression only lasted a couple of years. 2) Interview your prospective employer - don't "grill" them, but at least take the time to find out what are they looking for, what do they want, and most importantly what is the problem they want the prospective employee or consultant to solve. This will give you an idea of how well you fit the bill rather than leaving it all in their hands and having no idea how good a fit you are.
Listen! - During a job interview the most important thing you can do (more than showing them what you know) is to LISTEN! Hear what the employer's issues are that they want solved. Repeat it back to them to make sure you understand their issue and let them correct you or give you the finer points on the issue. We are all (contractor or permanent employee) here to solve a problem and it is very important that you understand the problem. That is far more important than providing any solution. If in the interview you can truly understand and grasp the problems to be solved then that will tell the prospective employer that you are the right person for the job.
Dressing for the interview - Yeah this really seems like interviewing 101 from back in college. But I'm not so sure. First impressions are pretty important. You don't want to overdress for the job which can say 1) I'm desperate or 2) I may be too uptight and not fit in. But on the other hand you don't want to seem disrespectful. So right or wrong I normally try to dress like the execs of the company I'm interviewing with. So if you know that a company is casual (like Sun) then throw on a sports coat and a pair of dockers, no jeans. But if you are interviewing at a bank then wear a suit and tie.

Further assistance:

I have a job groups where I and many of my friends share good jobs that we may hear of via recruiters. This has been quiet for quite some time but please feel free to join:

For people that want to join the group send an email to:
opennetjobs-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

For people that want to leave the group send an email to:
opennetjobs-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you would like me to post your resume on my website http://www.opennet.com I would be glad to. This is a consortium of consultants and although it is geared toward network management and network engineers, it can be a handy place to put the resume for recruiters to download.
I ask that you look at the existing resumes (under the menu option "The Team") and then provide your resume in MS word format, provide an email address you would like to use as your contact email address on the website, and a 1 sentence summary of your background (similar to those on the website already).

If you want to go into consulting, I am more than happy to give you a quick overview of what you need to watch out for, how to price yourself, how to negotiate the contract. So give me a call on that and I can help you.