Here’s something that seems like a very plain vanilla job search trick, but it’s pretty useful if you don’t know how to do it.

When we print resumes on heavy resume paper for our clients, we will very often print on both sides of the paper. Thus, a 2-page resume can sit on one sheet of paper, front and back.

This weekend, I had a client ask if we used any sort of fancy printer to do it. She wanted to know if she could do this herself going forward. I said no. In fact, we use a very basic HP laser printer to do our printing, and I figure that a lot of modern printers can do what we do. So, if your printer is, say, less than 5 years old, you can print your resume on both sides of the paper as well.

Here’s how to do it:

How To Print Your Resume On Both Sides Of The Paper

Check and see if your printer handles “duplex printing.”

What is duplex printing? It’s the fancy term for… you guessed it… printing on both sides of the paper. If you have this feature, then the process is pretty straight forward and automated.

First, go to print. I’ll be assuming you’re using Microsoft Word.

Select print, but not “quick print.”

Next, you’re going to want to hit the Properties button.

Finally, you’re going to hit the Printing Shortcuts tab, and select Eco-print (Two-sided Printing)

And that’s it. Now when you hit OK to print, it will automatically print first on one side of the paper… then suck it back in and print on the other side.

By the way, you can click on any of the pictures above to enlarge them.

But What If My Printer Doesn’t Have Duplex Printing?

This is not a problem. Why? Because if you think about it, you can manually force any printer to print on both sides of the paper.

Simply print one page.

Then, take that page and manually feed it back into the printer, but being sure to turn it over. Now, print page 2. It should come out on the other side of the page you’ve just printed.

You might have to experiment a few times to get this right, as some printers feed upside down, head to foot, etc.

But if you just experiment a little with manually feeding the paper, absolutely any printer can print on both sides of the paper.

Simple tip, I know. But might be useful to some.

Related posts:

1. Resume Paper – What Paper Should I Print My Resume On?
2. Office Hack: Confidential Network Printing
3. How To Bind Paper Without Staples Or Clips

A great article this weekend about how to make sure your email gets read.

We’re inundated with email these days. A lot of it spam. How can you make sure your email gets read?

This is especially important for job seekers. Especially if you’re sending in a job application, what can you do to make it more likely the hiring manager will open an read you email?

I’ll summarize the advice list after the jump, but I encourage you to read the entire article for detailed tips.

1. Keep it short.
2. Make the subject line a summary.
3. Start and end with “you.”
4. Only one topic per message.
5. Use an appropriate tone.
6. Don’t send extra copies.
7. Respect spelling and grammar.
8. Remember it’s not private.
9. Email isn’t for arguments.
10. Mind those threads.

I can think of instances where each of these points have direct application for job seekers.

Read the whole thing here.

Related posts:

1. Retro Job Search Hack- Remember The Fax?
2. On Email Blackouts…
3. TimeWaster- Read the Wall Street Journal For Free

This guest post is contributed by Kate Willson, who writes on the topics of top online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: katewillson2@gmail.com.

The most important thing to keep in mind when you’re unemployed is this: until you have a hiring contract in hand, the job search is your job. By this I mean that as you should treat your job search just like every other job you’ve worked. Sure, you’re not getting paid for it, but one day it will lead to another paycheck, so you should approach it seriously and in an organized fashion. If you can keep yourself in a professional mindset while you look for a job, you’ll have a greater chance at succeeding. Here are a few tips to help you as look for another job.

Adjust Your Attitude

Because you want to approach the job search as if it were your job, you should try to maintain as professional an attitude as possible. Don’t let yourself get down into an unemployment rut. Try to maintain whatever routine you followed before you lost your previous job, or you should establish a new routine that will keep you focused. Wake up at the same time every morning and dress for work. You don’t have to put on a tie or high heels, but certainly be sure you dress in a way that will keep you focused on your objectives. In other words, it’s easier to lounge around the house all day if you never change out of your pajamas.

Make a List of Objectives

Just as you would have objectives to meet at a real job, so should you have objectives to meet for your job search. Think of how long you can live comfortably without a job, and then figure out what you need to do in order to find a job by the end of that window. Ideally, you’ll be sending out a certain number of applications and resumes each week. You’ll want to figure out if you’re going to stay within the same career track or try to branch out.

Organize Your Tasks

At your old job, you had a routine you most likely followed each day, so do the same for your job search. For example, in the morning you could spend a few hours browsing and researching potential job openings. Take an hour to follow up with contacts in your network who might be able to help you. Break for lunch and then get to work on the applications you’ve got in-progress. Finally, end the day by sending out a batch and adding it to your tally of active applications. Every time the numbers rise in your spreadsheet, you’re getting closer to your goal.

Meet Your Goals

Whatever you do, make sure you meet your goals each week. This might mean that you have to ‘work overtime,’ but remember, the extra effort is important to finally getting that paycheck. Likewise, if you hear of a hot lead, then you might want to turn all of your attention on that. You’ll want to constantly evaluate your goals and how you’re achieving them. This will help you adjust your routine as conditions in the job market change.

Answer to a Supervisor

Finally, make sure you’re accountable and have to answer to a ‘supervisor’ each week. Ask one of your friends or your spouse of a family member to check on you Friday after ‘work.’ Sometimes simply talking about your process to another person can help motivate you or lead to your coming up with a new plan.

Related posts:

1. Job Search Hack- Organize Your Search Using The Rule Of Thirds
2. A Radical Job Search Strategy – Offering Bounties
3. The 5 Dirty Little Secrets Of A Successful Job Search

Let’s face it. None of us are really fans of PowerPoint.

The common complaint is that far from adding color and pizazz, PowerPoint hasn’t proven to make presentations any less boring or dull. In fact, many argue that the very reliance on rote slides and sequencing can make speeches and presentations worse.

But like pollution, bad pop music and politicians… you shouldn’t just complain about the sorry state of the world… you should step up and do your little part to improve things.

That’s why I love the new blog I found, Slides That Stick, which is dedicated to making us all better PowerPointers. Check them out for a bevy of PowerPoint tips and tricks.

Related posts:

1. Just Say No To PowerPoint Week
2. CuePrompter- A Teleprompter For Everyone
3. Whistle While You Work- The Great New NPR Music Site

Recently, we discussed ways to prepare for/manage work during the vacation season.

The website unclutterer.com has another idea for helping you manage your tendency to veg out in front of your computer during holiday’s/weekends. Let’s face it, we’re all champion procrastinators. We sit down with work to do… but an hour later, we’ve read blogs, checked stocks, done everything, in other words, except the work we came to do.

How to discipline yourself? How about NOT plugging your laptop in?

Limit yourself to the life of your laptop battery. Such self-imposed scarcity of time and juice might encourage discipline: you’ll work as much as you can because your chances to do so are limited.

More importantly, this exercise in restraint can cure you of the bad habit I’m most guilty of: checking on work every 5 minutes even though I don’t have to. The limited battery power will encourage you to work only when necessary and to check on work at more reasonable (and less impulsive) intervals.

I was a little stunned that my Saturday morning number was 35 percent. My first thought was that I must have a lame battery. A good battery wouldn’t be on 35 percent in just a day! Except, when I stopped to calculate my usage on Friday, I realized I had easily spent three hours on my laptop. My battery was working fine, it was user consumption that was to blame.

Snip.

My computer officially died with 20 hours to go before work started on Monday.

I don’t like the idea that I used all of my computer’s battery power before the three-day weekend had come to a close. What I took from it is that I’m having difficulty drawing the line between work and free time. I think about work constantly and would like to be able to turn those thoughts off and relax at least once in a while.

So, for the duration of the month, I’m going to have battery-powered laptop weekends. Work matters a great deal to me, but so does taking advantage of my free time. I hope that this process helps me to better prioritize my time away from work and relax and rejuvenate to make my official work time more productive.

Related posts:

1. TLC For the Batteries in Your Life
2. Road Warrior Post Deux: Laptop Samurai Tricks
3. Top 10 Checklist To Prepare For Your Vacation From Work

There’s been a lot of talk this year that the vacation season won’t be the same. You hear about families staying home rather than break the bank to pay for the gas necessary to drive to Wally World. Also, I’ve seen a couple of cable news stories about how vacations are increasingly culturally passe in this work-all-the-time world. And then there are the economic concerns. Might not want to take a long vacation if you smell layoffs coming.

But if you are taking some time off, we are now officially entering the season to do so. Here’s a quick checklist of things you should do to prepare yourself (and your boss; and your coworkers) for a restful and successful vacation.

1. Decide now if you’re going to do any work while you’re on vacation. Careerbuilder says 1 in 4 workers plan to do some work while on vacation. This is an all or nothing decision. It’s like being “kinda pregnant.” You are or you aren’t. Doing things halfway doesn’t work out well. If you want to make a clean break, you should dot all your I’s and cross all your T’s now. If you’re going to be available in certain situations, you have to make sure your lines of communication are open. Set the table now so there is no confusion.
2. If you ARE going to be in touch (even if just to monitor things) while away, make sure to check the lay of the land ahead of time. Don’t blindly assume the lodge or Grandma Sarah’s house will have internet access… or even cell phone coverage! Inquire ahead of time if you need specific tools available.
3. Whatever your ultimate decision, make sure the boundaries you settle on are widely known and understood. Under what threat of emergency are you willing to be contacted, and at what number?
4. Try to bring all open projects to a conclusion. This makes it easier for your co-workers (they’re not waiting on your return to move things forward) and it makes things easier for you. You’ll be much happier to come back to a clean slate.
5. To that end, clean your desk. Everything must go! Answer all outstanding voicemails. Clear out your email inbox. If you make a clean break, it will be easier to hit the ground running when you come back: anything on your plate when you return will be new business because you closed all old business out before you left.
6. Right now, before you leave, make a to-do list of things you expect you’ll need to tackle when you get back. Don’t rely on your memory after a week at the beach to remember about that important lunch appointment the Tuesday after you get back.
7. Set your email out of office autoreplies. Click here for step by step instructions on how to do so.
8. If someone is covering for you, make sure all of your usual contacts know who this person is and how they can be contacted.
9. If someone is covering for you, meet with them and set up a plan. Eliminate any chance of surprise. Make clear what they can expect and what you’ll expect when you get back.
10. Don’t feel guilty. No matter what the modern work ethos is, everyone deserves a vacation now and again. Even you.

Related posts:

1. Prepare Your Desk (To Be Away From Your Desk)
2. Managing Work While On Vacation – Part 2
3. Ask Brian: How Long To Wait For Approval On A Vacation Request

1. First, take the sick day. Stay home. You don’t get any bonus points for being a martyr and trying to work through a cold. And you’re just going to get everyone else in the office sick, thereby destroying the productivity of your whole team. You know how much you hate it when the guy in the cubicle next to you is sneezing and sniffling all over the place? Today, that guy is you. Do everyone else a favor and be a one-person quarantine.
2. Take steps to stay in the loop. If you’re gone for one day or one week, try to arrange things so that you’re not too far behind the 8 ball when you get back. Set up your emails to forward home. Set out of office replies. Have someone check in with you to let you know what you miss.
3. Take steps to keep the other people on your team in the loop. From working at startups, I can tell you that nothing monkey-wrenches a project more than a key team member suddenly going awol with no status reports. The team member missing- where was he on the project? When will he get back? Did he solve problem x? Can I finish my part of the project or do I have to wait until he gets back? Avoid all this. Before checking out, try to give a debriefing to everyone on your team. Let them know where you’re at and try to make it easy for them to access key aspects of what you were doing while you’re gone.
4. Take full advantage of the sick day. Try to make it one sick day instead of three. Working at home accomplishes nothing if it only delays your recovery. If you’ve committed to taking the sick day, make the most of it. Stay in bed. Sleep as much as possible. Drink OJ. One day of good, solid recovery rest is better than three days of half work/half sick leave. I have a friend that takes his sick days in a hotel room because he knows an afternoon at home with the kids won’t give him the rest he needs.

I guess you can surmise I’ve been sick lately. With a cold that came on Tuesday like a baseball bat to the lungs. Getting better, tho.

Related posts:

1. Sick At Work Official Term: Presenteeism
2. A Clean Cubicle Is A Healthy Cubicle
3. Working Vs. Stay-At-Home Parents, A Cost Analysis

Here’s an appropriate post for a Monday.

BusinessWeek has a short article about how some companies, in the name of worker and server sanity, are encouraging workers to hold off sending emails over the weekend.

I think we can all relate to coming fresh into the office, only to be deluged by a mountain of emails that can derail you from getting started on real work for several hours as you dig out.

Since late 2006, the PricewaterhouseCoopers email system sends an automated warning to workers logging in on Saturdays and Sundays: “It’s the weekend. Help reduce weekend e-mail overload for both you and your colleagues by working offline.”

The article points out that sending an email urges others to respond right away. Some might respond just then, some might not right away… and sometimes the email gets lost since others might not be looking for work issues on a Saturday afternoon. It’s better to wait until work hours so that this disconnect of attention doesn’t cause unneeded confusion.

I’ve thought a lot about this over the last couple of years as smartphones and blackberries have entered my life. Just because you might have transitioned over to a 24/7 workday, doesn’t mean I did as well. When someone says to me, “Didn’t you get the message I sent you on Saturday?” I think, “Well, no. It was Saturday.”

There are a lot of things changing in the world of etiquette related to the new technologies in our life, none more so than communications etiquette. I think the time may be coming when those of us who chose NOT to plug into an “always available” lifestyle will have to stand up for our right to only deal with work during work hours.

BTW, I’d link to the BusinessWeek article, but it’s not online.

Related posts:

1. Professional Email Addresses And Why They’re A Good Idea
2. On Email Blackouts…
3. Working 4 The Weekend- Nov. 2-4, 2007

Man, was I busy last week! That’s why I grabbed the quick 4-day vacation last month when the opportunity came up. I knew this week was coming.

Even though I’ve turned over the day to day operations at ResumeWriters.com to professional management, in the end, I’m still the bossman, and occasionally that means I have to work as hard as I used to.

The past four months have been the busiest four month period in ResumeWriters history. Extrapolate any evidence this may provide as to the health of the job market on your own…

Anyway, we desperately needed an organizational re-organization in order to better manager the flood of business. That’s all sorted out now. Be back to posting normally on Monday.

Related posts:

1. Taking A Week Off
2. Organize Yourself- Create Your Own Personal Personnel File
3. Where The Jobs Are- Healthcare Edition

I’m usually hard on Microsoft on this blog. But nerdy tech circles today are abuzz at the announcement of Live Mesh from Microsoft. Think of Live Mesh as one ring to sync them all, every device and every file… provided you use Windows.

Apparently, this whole system is not quite ready for immediate use, but if things pan out like promised, this would obviously be a hugely helpful thing for the modern office worker. It might actually go a long way to make the Windows environment more useful.

A lot of the discussion around this announcement is confusing, so I’m going to crib from an easy-to-understand rundown from the techblog Mashable.

What – Live Mesh is a service that lets you synchronize your settings, files, feeds and applications on several computers.

What’s the big deal – there are already ways to synchronize stuff on the net. Foxmarks is a good example: you install it in Firefox on several computers, and your bookmarks sync seamlessly. Live Mesh, however, is a single platform that will make it easier for 3rd party app developers to do this. If Microsoft does this right, you’ll get used to using the Live Mesh for syncing all your devices, files as well as most or all of your applications.

Is this like a WebOS (Webdesktop, Webtop?) – yes, although everyone seems to be avoiding the term, this is a lot like all those WebOS apps you’ve seen. You get a virtual desktop with 5GB of storage and you can access it from anywhere. It’s integrated with Windows’ Remote Desktop, so it’s really simple to set up.

How will it look and feel in practice (we’re talking about the future here) – Let’s say that you and three other coworkers have a shared Mesh desktop. You fire it up, check out the log to see who changed what. Great, Mike added the graphics you needed. You add some notes to the graphics and drop them into the Mesh, but you share it only with your devices; they’re not ready to be seen by everyone just yet. On the way to work, you want to start some downloads on your computer at work, so you remotely connect to it through your iPhone. The rest of the trip you read your feeds; the ones you read at home are marked read so you can just keep reading where you left of.

To put it really simple: the promise of the Mesh is that you won’t have to care where you are or which device you’re using – your data will always be there. You’ll only have to care about which data you want to share with whom.

Which devices – Right now, we’re talking only about Windows XP and Vista computers; in the future, it will work with Mac, mobiles, etc.

Related posts:

1. Fighting Back Against Windows
2. This Time, Don’t Ignore The Windows Update Thingy
3. Abandoning Microsoft Word