There's building your resume, and then there's building it with gimmicks. Kemba Dunham recently noted in The Wall Street Journal that some job applicants are willing to try anything to find employment. Instead of mailing out resumes, one creative job seeker in New York printed his resume on two poster boards. Sandwiched between the displays, he stood on a Manhattan corner and handed out 1,000 paper resumes. And his off-the-wall stunt paid off, landing 45 interviews and 20 job offers.

A less successful resume gimmick involved a graphic designer who applied to a Web site for pet owners by wrapping her resume in a dog collar and inscribing her name on a bone-shaped ID tag. Also placing a coffee stain on her cover letter to Starbucks, she hoped her mailing would stand out from the rest. Both gimmicks generated responses, but no job. Employers advise job applicants to play it safe by sticking with traditional resumes.

They emphasize that stretching the truth or falsifying information on a resume can lead to dead ends as well, reported Dwight Hamilton in CA Magazine. Infocheck, a reference-checking firm, conducted a survey indicating that false or erroneous information now appears on 33 percent of all resumes, a 9 percent rise over the last year, according to Hamilton, who also noted Infocheck's finding that more employers are checking references than in previous years. Employers, too, are discovering an alarming rise in the number of resumes containing false information.

The news about the stock market and the economy gets gloomier by the day. Job cuts announced by U.S. companies almost tripled in February from year-ago levels, international outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas recently reported. Every day seems to bring new headlines about layoffs. Despite these signals that employers are losing confidence in the slowing U.S. economy, columnist Jane Bryant Quinn claims that if you have to lose your job, be glad it's now. "New positions are cropping up faster than old ones are being chopped," Quinn wrote recently. "The employment rate -- meaning the portion of working-age people holding jobs -- remains at a historic high."

Still, Quinn advises a number of steps to prepare workers in case the axe falls:

1. Network like mad by going to trade shows and conventions and collecting business cards.
2. Make sure all your personal information is off your office computer since you may have very little time to vacate the workplace if you get pink-slipped.
3. Evaluate your skills and their marketability. Take some courses if you think your skills could use updating.
4. Jump back into jobhunting right away if you're downsized; don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself.
5. Change careers if it's realistic to do so, but don't assume a career change will be a magic bullet.
6. Have some cashed stashed to see you through your time of unemployment.
7. Don't panic.