I read resumes for a living. I have no idea how many resumes I have read but I am sure it is thousands and thousands. When I do orientation with our interns, they kind of glaze over when I start to talk about the patterns and characteristics that we look for. One of my interns described it as a kind of black art.
So here’s the thing: make it easy for us!
If you are posting your information on a job board, here are some of the things that should be included to make sure you get seen by the right people:
- You are looking/not looking but curious/not looking but like to have your stuff out there
- You are employed/not employed/not employed enough
- You are willing to look at out of town opportunities/no way in hell will you relocate
- How much money you are looking for, even if it is a wide range.
- Your education and where it came from. Don’t make stuff up. If you did not finish your degree, don’t say you have one. Similarly, if your degree is from outside Canada, don’t say you got it from the University of Gdansk in Canada. We were not born yesterday.
Monster and Workopolis put all those fields in there for a reason. Use them. Make it easy for those of us fishing in an ocean of resumes to use the right bait to find you.
Recruiter's Couch 
If I could offer one more item….
Tell us what your objective is – what is it that you want to do! Some vague statement about wanting to “share your knowledge and experience to make the world a better place”, does a recruiter no good when they’re trying to figure out if you may or may not be interested in the position we’re looking to fill.