Hi! I am Brian Alden, founder and CEO of job.

com, and today we are talking about what it takes to get a better job in a down economy as well as how to get a better job in any economy. And right now, I would like to kind of talk about some of the things that are important for a modern day resume and what you need to have in your resume and what you need not to have in your resume.

There are several key components to a resume and every resume should include the following:1. You have to have all of your contact information. Double-check and make sure that your phone number is correct and your email is also are correct.

2. You want to have a little brief career summary which kind of gives a little background on who you are as an associate or as an employee for somebody.

3. You want to talk about your education background and where you went to school, what degrees you have, if you have multiple degrees.

4. You want to get into your career history.

Now the career history is the key component to this because we are going to talk about knowing what your responsibilities are, what type of accomplishments that you have had throughout your career.

A resume is very, very important for you because what happens is, is with that resume, you are going to - that gets your foot into the door and get you at least the conversation with the recruiter or the HR person. So you have to make sure that you are leading with your strengths.

Talk about some of your accomplishments as to what you did at your previous employer. A great example is, if you are in sales, you want to walk about your sales increases and how often that you groove the business in your territory.

Another thing that you want to make sure is that your accomplishments are detailed out in bullet points, make it easy for a person to read. Most people will only spend a minute to three minutes reading a resume. So all of your -- the most important accomplishments should lead to the front of your resume on page one, a lot of times a person won't even need the page two on your resume.

There are several things that you should not include in your resume and some of those are your Social Security number, you never want to put your Social Security number on your resume.

Two, you don't want to put a picture of yourself on your resume.

Three, you don't want to put anything about your children on your resume or how many kids you have, what are their names, ages, things like that. You also don't want to put anything about your height and weight on a resume at all.

One of the things about a resume is, it is really supposed to be about your professional work experience. You don't want to involve any of your personal details such as your family, and again, your Social Security number. Nobody really cares about what you did 15-20 years ago, which is going to be what's on page two and three or page two, and maybe even not included on your resume. Most employers are looking at the most recent 10-15 years, if you have been that long into the workforce. If you are fresh out of school, it's going to be a little different because you might not have as much of a career history. If I want to leave your education at the top and then talk about some of the things that you did at school, that would make you a great employee for a potential company.

There are several ways for you to get your resume into the hands of the right people who can help you in your job search. One, we talked about a little bit earlier making sure that you get your resume out to the people in your network. People that would know and be able to help you find a better job.

Two, you want to make sure that you post your resume to all the different online career sites whether it be job.

com or another one.

Three, you want to try and think about using a Resume Distribution Service and we talked about that brief a little bit earlier, where you take your resume, you fill up a profile, you post your resume into a computer program, and that computer program then sends your resume out to executive recruiters, headhunters and even some cases employers that match. They are looking for a person like your resume and that's a great way to get your interview process started.

By keeping these tips in mind, you will be on your way to writing yourself a professional resume which will help open some doors for you and assist you in your job search.