Pants Full of Unix

This was originally a response to this comment, but it shot right on past the 4300 character limit. It's probably generally useful anyway. Note that I'm not yet employed using this approach, but I'm content with how things are going so far, given the period of time in which I have to find a job or run out of money.

My best (or, at least, fastest) responses have come out of the regional jobcircle, which also has a way better user interface than any of the others I've used. It was originally NYC and Long Island, but it's expanded a lot, south as far as Philadelphia (and sort of Washington, DC, but it's only reliable so far as Philly) and north to around Boston. That particular example may not help you, but it's worth seeing if there's a local analogy. I've also got a listing on monster.com and dice.com. It took a couple of weeks before I started to get responses off of those without asking for them. (I'd been applying to stuff on all of them all along, which yields some response, but it's hard to remember, unless you're keeping really careful copies of everything, where it came from… and I sort of don't care.)

Here are my tricks for the recruiter web sites:

1. Change things, subtly, often. On some (not all) “most recently modified” entries show up earlier in searches done by recruiters/businesses than those that are less so. Keeping yourself on the first page of these searches is a Good Idea if you're still actively looking.
2. Make your resume show up really well on keyword searches. Slavetraders don't read resumes, they download a bunch and do a keyword search across them (or, if they're really lazy, pay to do it on the recruiter web site of their choice). If there's something you do well, or anyway something that you want to do, make sure that word shows up repeatedly in your resume (these vaguely correlate with the words I've bolded in my resume, though the bolding has a different purpose). Make sure that synonyms for your choice show up too (I've no experience with HP/UX nor AIX, so they don't show up much, but they're there, so that if there's a position that's a lot of stuff I know, but on a Unix I haven't used, my resume will still come up).
3. Use the stupid agents. Apply to any of those jobs that look appetizing. Do it through the website unless the ad explicitly asks for something else. Take the time to write a form letter in the field for doing so. This can be mostly boilerplate, but should touch on which aspects of your experience (which it's understood there's more detail about on your resume/CV) relate to the job description. Disregard what the response rate on this is; it'll take you about three hours a day if you reply to every single possiblity (as I have been) and way less if you're employed and just scanning for stuff that sounds cooler than what you've got now. Which segues to…
4. … make the recruiter/HR muppet happy. I knew a lot of people in my graduating class who wouldn't deign to preduce an MS Word resume for potential employers. (”If they don't take Postscript, I don't want a job from them anyway.” Yeah, asshole, which is why you don't have one right now.) This is dumb, especially if you're playing the recruiter game. It's relatively painless for you, and it's a routine part of their business. Recruiters want Word because they've got a Word template of headers and footers that they're dumping it in that has their company name plastered on the top, so that potential employers will remember which recruiter got them this resume. It's a stupid game, but you have to play it to get positive responses. It's not like you're actually putting out.
5. Recruiters are gatekeepers. They have no tech know-how. You need to have keywords that make them happy, because keywords are all they have from the end employer to find someone. You need to have a good story for them to pitch about why you want to leave your current job (or, as in my case, why you've already “left”). You need to be personable on the phone, and, while honest, you need to make yourself sound enticing to their “clients”. Always remember that they are putting themselves out by offering you to an employer. If they offer up a bunch of trash, they'll never get asked by that employer for recruiting again. It's in their best interest to get you a job (their salary often depends heavily upon it; some work exclusively on commission), but if you aren't nice to them, they'll think you won't be nice to the hiring company.
6. It's not till it gets to a potential employer that your resume has to look good. It needs to be clear to the executive level what you're good at at a glance (this is, again, a keyword search, but it's a visual one, not an automated one), and it needs to be clear to the tech level that you're not bullshitting. My approach to this is the projects section with bolded terms that you can see at a glance. It also means that it's easy for people giving me a tech proofing to glance back at it and remember the resume when they've gone through fifty. Having been on the other side of this dance, I can assure that this is something that interviewers will appreciate, and probably subconsciously, which is better in many ways.
7. Without going too far… one interviewing tip: Never Lie. If there's a question you don't know the answer to, “I don't know,” or “I don't have experience with that, but here's the conceptual way I'd approach it,” (actually saying those words; this isn't a university paper, so it's okay to map out where you're going explicitly before going there) wins you way more points than even the most skillful bullshit.