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Cut back on unnecessary expenses at home. Find out where the unemployment office is (because getting right over there and applying may result in benefits coming a week earlier). If you live in an expensive apartment or house, decide whether it’s possible to move to someplace cheaper. Turn your leased car in and get a serviceable junker. Ditch your expensive cell phone plan, DirecTV, and high speed internet, and get more affordable offerings.Collect contact info from colleagues who you respect. Take all your personal stuff home. Start practicing interview techniques. Send out resumes.Make sure friends know you’re facing the stressful possibility of unemployment. Don’t be ashamed. Don’t hide at home. Talk to people. Ask for leads. Exercise. In fact, increase your level of exercise. Ask your doctor for a prescription for antidepressants.

It was my former coworker who found what I call loopholes. We'll call him Stan. Stan was in his late 20s, a new graduate, and had never held a real job before. He also had an obsession with gambling, being an Uber driver, and working out (especially during lunch).Loophole #1: When a company doesn't check references or test your claims (i.e. experienced in HTML), you're golden to say whatever you want as long as it sounds reasonably true.Stan hit the company at the perfect time. They had just fired one worker and needed an immediate replacement. Stan fit the bill and was hired in just a few days - far from the norm for this company. BUT they needed help and he was great at lying…I mean, interviewing.Loophole #2: The company lacked HR and any sort of warning policy = freedom to do what you wantStan had a terrible work ethic, horrific memory, and none of the skills he included in his resume. Clients were being lost left and right. Coworkers were getting tired of him. He would spend more time talking than anything and was even moved several times to different "time out" cubicles.Unfortunately, the company didn't have any warning system or policy in place. We're an at-will state, but even so, the upper management kept giving Stan warning after warning. Every time he was pulled in for a private, closed-door meeting, we hoped this would be it. We were wrong each time.Loophole #3: When the boss is too sick to work, he'll also be too sick to fire you.Nothing changed with Stan other than being kicked off projects. He was loathed by most of the office at this point but didn't care. Because of his cubicle, no one would catch him leaving. He would work around 5 hours/day and take extended PTO/sick leave without telling anyone. Not sure how he managed to get away with that for 18+ months, but he did.He was on the chopping block at least five times, which also happened to be about the same time our boss was in the hospital with a serious illness. The company didn't have a contingency plan, so Stan stayed and continued being Stan.Loophole #4: No one can check your reference if the company no longer exists!Thankfully, Stan was fired after near two years of working - or rather destroying - a brand. The path of destruction left in his wake was astounding. About two months after firing Stan, the company was purchased and merged with another company. Stan found out and quickly adjusted his resume (available via LinkedIn, of course!) that he had been laid off during the transition.Mind you: there were no layoffs prior to the acquisition; there weren't any major layoffs for several months following it either. Because the original company didn't even exist at that point, he simply left it at that. No one ever checked into it.Fun fact: I've followed Stan's career on LinkedIn out of morbid curiosity, and other companies haven’t been as patient with him. He stayed with future employers an average of 90 days, at which point the probation period was over and he was let go.He would delete this short 90-day job from his LinkedIn profile and soon have another new employer. *Shock* He would again keep it for about 90 days before deleting it from his profile.Basically, lather, rinse, and repeat for about another two years. He took out a huge business loan last year, but I think that startup collapsed before it even get off the ground. He's now returned to college for a Master's Degree or rather an excuse not to work.

Just as the best product is the one that gets the job done, the best resumes are those that communicate your skills and accomplishments in a clear, effective way.Graphical resumes are, in particular, terrible. Unless you can be one of the lucky few to get a bunch of media attention for a nifty format, you will hurt yourself far more than you'll help yourself if you use a graphical resume. Graphical resumes are typically difficult to read and they sacrifice content -- your hard-earned accomplishments -- in favor of pretty pictures and useless graphics. See: Why Your Awesome, Creative Resume Isn’t Working.A good resume format has the following attributes:Multiple Columns: Multiple columns make it easier for someone to quickly skim your company titles, positions, schools, and other key facts. It also stores this information in a very compact way, allowing more space to list things you've done. (Note: do not use one of those templates where the entire left part of the resume is a column for the categories. They waste a lot of space.)Short and Sweet: People only spend about 5 - 30 seconds reading your resume, and this isn't enough to read even a full page of content. When your make your resume too long, it just dilutes the quality of each thing on your resume. Focus on just the highlights. One page is often all you need, but if you have 10+ years of experience and multiple roles, you can justify at most two pages. That's it though.The Right Sections: No objectives (they're useless). Summary sections can be okay, but they're usually not (after all, if your resume is short and concise, then you don't really need a summary section).Use Tables: Okay, this is really nit picky, but it's a personal pet peeve of mine. The way to make multiple columns in Microsoft Word is with tables (with invisible columns), not by hitting 'space' dozens of times.Bulleted -- No Long Text Blobs: Again, you only have about 15 seconds to make an impression. Large blocks of text will not be read. Keep your bullets to 1 - 2 lines (and, ideally, about half or more of those bullets should be one line).Appropriate Use of Fonts and Formatting: You don't want to go overboard with fonts and formatting. However, a little bit of formatting (bold, italics, etc) can be useful to organize your resume.So with that said, here are two formats that work perfectly well:This resume can be downloaded here: http://www.careercup.com/resume.This resume can be downloaded here: http://www.thegoogleresume.com/resources.htmlThe first resume is a format I designed myself, whereas the second one is a format required by Wharton's MBA program.