Summer is here, and for most of us that means finding a job. Job hunting can be a stressful time, but a powerful resume can make your hunt quite a bit easier. Typically, a hiring manager will read your resume for a few seconds, so you don't have long to impress them. A good resume can be the difference between being called for an interview and not being called at all. (Read more about acing your next job interview in this article.)

Here are some keys to transforming your resume into an effective job hunting tool:

• Be honest: This might seem obvious, but I've run across too many resumes that stretched or broke the truth and came back to bite the job seeker. Write your resume as if a former coworker will be reading it. Remember, the only purpose of a resume is to get you to an interview, and most any interviewer will be able to get to the truth pretty quickly. Honesty can get you a good job now and a good reference later.
• Use proper grammar and spelling: Nothing screams DON'T HIRE ME quite like a poorly written resume. Misspellings, bad punctuation, and other grammatical errors will kill your chances of making it to the next level. Another hint is to use the past tense in describing your experience. It's subtle, but using the past tense sends the message that you've done these things and are ready for new challenges.
• Be brief: Hiring managers will only spend a few seconds glancing over your resume, so unless you're applying for a tenured professorship keep your resume to one or two pages. Forget about extraneous stuff like hobbies, marital status, and high school. Instead, keep things focused on your skills, experience, and accomplishments. Also, use formatting techniques like bullets and (limited) bold facing to help guide the hiring manager to those items you want highlighted. Keep it brief, and more of the good stuff will get read.
• Tailor the resume to the job: Your resume should not be set in stone. Adjust it to match the job listing or industry as closely as possible to increase your chance of getting that interview. Use all the keywords and buzzwords from the classified ad, and make sure each item in their job requirements is addressed in your experience section. Include accomplishments and skills that a relevant to the job, and exclude anything that would be a distraction. Show them how close you are to being their perfect candidate!
• Focus on accomplishments: Companies hire people to get things done, or to solve problems that they have. Make your resume stand out by showing the things you've done and the problems you've solved for other companies. Also, don't forget to BE SPECIFIC -- Increased sales 147% in first quarter is more of an eye-catcher than Responsible for sales growth in first quarter. In a non-sales job, Reduced application processing time by 80% is a great example of an effective productivity-oriented accomplishment. Remember, companies are hiring to solve their problems, so let the job opening be the first problem you help them solve!
• Use action words: Sentences like Responsible for xyz or Supervised abc don't wow anybody. Remember, companies are looking for people to solve their problems -- show them what you've actually accomplished by using action words. Words like supervised, responsible, and coordinated are out; words like created, built, and solved get the job done.
• Use a cover letter: OK, I'll be the first to admit I hate doing cover letters. However, the cover letter gives you another chance to summarize your accomplishments and how well you match up with their requirements. Again, be sure to tailor your cover letter for the job. Generally, the few seconds spent reading a resume are also spent on the cover letter, so it will buy you some extra time that just might get you that interview.

In the early days of television, broadcasters turned to vaudeville and theater producers to create their programming. These producers simply created vaudeville and theater shows, and stuck a camera in the audience as an afterthought. They didn't understand the capabilities of the new medium, and so did a minimal job incorporating it into their more familiar works. Eventually, it took an outside industry - Hollywood - to produce shows specifically for television, introducing techniques familiar to today's viewers that made for a more effective medium.

College textbook publishers are experiencing a similar situation regarding the Internet. Like the early TV producers, today's publishers continue to make textbooks, and convert them in some fashion into Internet components as an afterthought - vaudeville and theater are replaced by E-books and web sites that offer static illustrations and text. None of these are specifically produced for the Internet, and deviate only slightly from the traditional textbook publishing paradigm.

By its very nature, the Internet is capable of providing far better (and less expensive) learning tools than those currently provided. College students are clamoring for these tools, but the textbook publishers have been inadequate to this task. Clearly, it is up to someone else to deliver on the Internet's promise.

We like to think that that The Smartacus Corporation of Fort Worth, Texas is one such company -- a "cinderella story" that delivers the goods with our College-Cram.com website. In many ways, our study programs (or Cramlets™) are more effective learning tools than traditional textbooks.

• Lower cost - College students spend $120 or more on each new textbook. Publishers, who get no revenue from "used" book sales, regularly publish new editions every three years to force more "new" book purchases; often these new editions are little changed from the preceding edition. College-Cram.com offers hundreds and hundreds of its popular Cramlets™ for free.
• Focused learning - Every study program in our library focuses on a single concept, such as calculating sales tax or the structure of the human heart. Students know which concepts they need to study, and need a way to get to them quickly without slogging through other concepts in the chapter that they already understand.
• Effective teaching techniques - Study programs in the College-Cram.com library are presented in ways that best convey the intended concept, often addressing multiple learning styles to ensure the best learning experience. For example, tab-tutor programs include a labeled illustration (for the visual learner), two different ways to work the formula (for the hands-on learner), and a glossary of terms (for reading-oriented learners). In addition, resources that are typically static are presented more effectively in this library. The Periodic Table and Logarithm Tables, for instance, come with instructions on how to use them, while financial statements provide explanations for each line item that are usually buried within the textbook, if provided at all.
• True interactivity - Unlike the E-books and such offered by textbook publishers, College-Cram.com's study programs are truly interactive. Formula-solvers, for example, accept numbers from the student and walk them through the steps required to solve math and science problems. Similarly, financial ratio solvers show the steps and also where to find the proper values on financial statements.

Those early vaudeville and theater producers ended up being replaced by their more effective film producer counterparts, who went on to transform the industry. Will the textbook publishers learn from television's early history, and change their ways before it's too late? Or can websites like College-Cram write their own cinderella stories?

At first glance, the news that Thomson is selling their college textbook publishing business seems unlikely to be of much interest to the average college student. However, this may end up being the biggest and costliest trick you get this Halloween.

Currently, three publishers control some 85% of the college textbook market -- Pearson/Prentice Hall, McGraw-Hill, and Thomson Learning. (Chances are, most if not all of your textbooks this semester were produced by one of these three.) There are others, like Wiley and Worth, but they hold small market shares in a handful of subject areas and cannot compete with the Big Three across the board.

So how did the Big Three grow so big? Over the past twenty years or more, each of these goliaths swallowed up smaller publishing companies like Dryden, Longman, Addison-Wesley, Irwin, etc. That's how they showed their shareholders growth -- they'd grow 5% by buying a company that had 5% market share. It was an effective strategy for many years, but one that is no longer viable -- they've run out of significant companies to buy!

So how does this affect the average student? Well, here's how. They can't grow 5% per year by buying up companies anymore, so how do you expect them to deliver that 5% growth to their shareholders? That's right, they jack up the textbook prices.

This worked for a while, until about five or six years ago when students started rebelling against the unreasonably high textbook prices. Since then, overall unit sales have been in decline -- in other words, students are buying fewer books. So, again, how do they deliver that 5% growth to their shareholders? That's right, they jack up the textbook prices even higher.

This background on the state of college textbook publishing is important to understanding the Thomson sale's possible outcomes. As I see it, there are three ways this sale could go:

• Another textbook publisher buys the whole thing - This is highly unlikely. The other Big Two would face a prohibitive amount of regulatory barriers, and the smaller competitors just can't swing the $5 billion price tag. This is a non-option.
• Thomson sells off pieces to other textbook publishers - Difficulty in finding a buyer could, as time progresses, cause employees and authors to start abandoning Thomson. (Face it, would you want to stick around?) This will put downward pressure on the sale price, and ultimately force Thomson to sell in bits and pieces -- the Chemistry list here, the Business Math list there. The bottom line here is that the Thomson imprints get absorbed into the remaining publishers, meaning less players and fewer choices for you the consumer.
• Investors outside the publishing industry buy the whole thing - If the business is sold intact, this is the only way it will happen. How likely is this scenario, though? I mean, Thomson is currently the #2 college textbook publisher in the world and they're still looking to bail out of the business. Given the economics I described above, and the continuing trend of lower unit sales, who in their right mind would want to do this?

Out of the three scenarios, two of them have the same affect: Thomson ends up walking away from this market with a few billion dollars of your money, and you'll end up with fewer choices and higher prices. The third could be a new player in the market (possibly a Web 2.0 company?) with a different agenda of market disruption, which could ultimately be the change we are looking forward to, cheaper books. The first doesn't sound like a treat to me, but the second might be a disguise worth waiting for.

College-Cram is a uniquely designed educational social network.

We combine the communication and collaboration tools of social networks like Facebook and MySpace with learning resources like... well, like the textbook publishers would (if they really cared about helping you). Create your own class notes, connect with your friends in an online study group, and learn from our resources (we call them Cramlets™).

Sign up for free to get complete access to all of our educational tools and Create/Connect/Learn your way to better grades in less time.

Don't Just Listen to Us!

College-Cram helps you get better grades in less time with our Create/Connect/Learn approach. Here's how Create works:

• Profile: As with any social network, College-Cram lets you describe yourself in your profile. You can upload a photo and identify your skills, interests, and more. Best of all, you can control who can see every bit of this information - anybody, only people who log in, only members of a particular study group or community, or nobody but you.
• Class Notes: Once you log in, you can add class notes in the "My Notebook" section. Just click the link at the menu bar on top of the screen. (Want an example? Check out this tutorial on the Accounting Cycle.)
• Blog entries: What social network would be complete without a blog? Follow the "Blog" link at the menu bar on top of the screen (once you've logged in) to share your thoughts or ask questions of your fellow students.
• Study Groups: Join your friends in an online study group, or organize fellow students around the world into a community discussing a topic you hold dear. Study groups can be whatever you want!

College-Cram helps you get better grades in less time with our Create/Connect/Learn approach. Here's how Connect works:

• Search bar: Just type your interests into the search bar to find others that are interested in the same things. Search for "vegetarian" to see folks interested in a meat-free lifestyle, or for "Brian" to see who has that name.
• Study Groups: Also called Communities, these are collections of students interested in a topic or theme. For example, type "Astronomy" in the search bar to find users and groups, and click the Astronomy icon. At the top of the left-hand column you'll see a link to "Click here to join this community" (if you're logged in). Click it -- that's how easy it is to join up.
  
• Professor Cram's Study Groups: As a bonus, these groups have hundreds of Cramlets and tutorials in their notebooks. Once you've selected the group, just follow the "Notebook entries" link at the bottom of the left-hand column. Here are links to these groups so you can go join right away:
• Business
• Accounting
• Business Math
• Economics
• Finance
• Science
• Astronomy
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Physics
• Math
• Algebra
• Pre-Calculus
• Trigonometry
• Languages
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Other
• Mythology
• Trivia
  
• US Government
• World History
  
• Blog entries: Once you've joined a Study Group or community, you can start posting in its blog and commenting on others' posts. Just use the "Community blog" link on the left-hand column to get there.

Just click here to sign up for free and start getting better grades faster with College-Cram.

College-Cram helps you get better grades in less time with our Create/Connect/Learn approach. Here's how Learn works:

•  Cramlets: Most online resources do a poor job of explaining topics, or end up explaining way too much. Our Cramlets focus on a single topic, letting you choose what you want to learn and when. Want an example? Try one of these:
• Periodic Table of elements
• Balance Sheet financial statement
• Factoring Trinomials tutorial
• Multi-Step Income Statement tutorial
  
  
• Search bar: Looking for help in a particular topic? Type it into the search bar above and find out what learning resources are available and who created them. You'll get Professor Cram's blog entries and Cramlets, plus icons for any other students or study groups that have resources that could help. For example, search for "Periodic Table" and you'll find Cramlets in Astronomy, Biology, Physics, and Chemistry. Below them are articles from Professor Cram plus suggested alternate tags below that.
  
  
• Tag cloud: Like the Search bar, click on any term in the tag cloud to find out what learning resources are available about that term, both from Professor Cram and from your fellow students. Be sure to tag your own creations well so other students can benefit from your wisdom too!

Just click here to sign up for free and start getting better grades faster with College-Cram.