Create a professional resume

Recent developments in the global economy have sent shockwaves through industries and companies around the world. Whether or not the economic downturn has hurt your employer or your job, it's a good time to take a look at your professional resume and update it or polish it as necessary. These six applications offer resume templates, styling advice, and helpful guidelines to help you develop a resume that impresses your next interviewer.

ResumeMaker Professional Ultimate

This jam-packed resume software is loaded with thousands of samples and templates from a wide range of industries. It also allows users to browse or search millions of available career opportunities. View sample cover letters and create and manage your own quickly and easily. A Virtual Interview feature puts you through the paces before the actual big event.

JobTabs Job Search and Resume

A nice, compact interface lets you create, edit, and manage your resume, while also searching job listings and creating job-search agents. More of job-search assistant than a resume builder, JobTabs uses a tree-style navigation with Search Agents for various industries and online career resources. Advanced search features let you narrow down your searches, while other tabs provide resume guidance and industry information about necessary training.

EasyJob Resume Builder

More than 25,000 resume and cover-letter templates provide a wide range of styles and formats for nearly any sort of job application. A clean navigation lets you manage your career history and goals and your resumes quickly and easily. A "Get Started" wizard may help reluctant job searchers to get the process rolling, and the career resources section includes an resume knowledgebase for reference.

CVitae

The software name has strong educational connotations, but the program works for many industries and lets users capture job offers directly through the application. A form-based approach lets users enter all of their work history, personal information, experience, and skills, transforming all of your data into a polished one-page paper. Keyword shortcuts make composing cover letters a breeze.

Kinetic Resume

For users who learn visually, this shareware app uses a multimedia approach to creating and editing your resume. Start out by simply copying and pasting your career information and personal data, decide what sort of jobs you are interested in pursuing, and before you know it, you've got a formatted Word document that should work for many professional job applications.

Resumizer

This online tool lacks some of the fancy features of its downloadable counterparts, but for speed and ease of use, it's hard to beat. Pick from several templates, enter your contact info, experience, qualifications, and skills, and you can quickly print or save a digital copy of a simple, stylish resume. The site is supported by the now ubiquitous Ads by Google and an occasional pop-behind, but there's no upsell, and the site also lets you create six different styles of cover letters.