Follow Rule of Three. As important as practice is in preparing for an interview, far too many of us overdo it. Trying to be perfect, we end up giving answers that are stilted or overly long. Remember then that your answer needn’t be perfect (if such a thing exists at all), only plausible. And to help convey that sense of plausibility, I suggest trying to give your answer in only three parts. For example, you might start by saying, “First, I would …,” and “Then, I would …," and “Finally, I believe it would be best if …”

When you follow Rule of Three, it becomes relatively simple to build answers that sound believable as you go along, are not too long, and are easier for interviewer to remember.

Obviously, there are many other things to study and internalize if you are to interview well, but in a pinch, just remembering three suggestions above will help enormously.

ASCII Format:

Your professionally laid out and formatted paper resume may end up looking like gibberish if simply transformed into an electronic copy. Programs like Word allow you to format nice looking documents with features such as tabs, bullets, centering, bold, italic and other word processing niceties.

Unfortunately, when converted to electronic form, many of these word processing features are lost. Worse, what's left over may bear no resemblance to exquisite resume that you labored over to produce.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. You can prepare a simple text version in a text editor like Notepad or any of dozens of other text editors out there. In this case, you'll replace many of these text effects. For example, you'll replace bullets with asterisks, word wrap with a hard carriage return, and tabs and justification effects with simple spaces.

Another solution is to use a program specifically designed for writing resumes like WinWay Resume Express. (See "Do It Yourself Resumes" page at www.Impressive-Resumes.com to learn more about this inexpensive handy program.) It features an easy way to transform your resume into a searchable electronic version with very little effort after you've created word processing formatted version.

No matter which method you use, be sure you've taken these simple preparations for electronic distribution before you hit "send." This will greatly increase chances that your resume will reach its intended audience. Copyright 2005 by Vincent Czaplyski, all rights reserved.

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