Okay so here’s a bit of a pickle we came across while On the Job Hunt: human resource departments are cutting back on personnel.  Meantime, human resource workers are being inundated with electronic resumés at a rate that has them buried in electronic paperwork.  At Denver Health, one of the area’s largest hospitals, “we get about 6700 applications a month” online, says Mark Genkinger, Human Resources Director of Recruitment.  Genkinger says it’s impossible to go through each one and this hospital doesn’t have one of the more sophisticated ‘applicant tracking systems’ some corporations use to sift out the contenders from the less qualified.   We asked Genkinger how someone stands out in a field of thousands.  He says, first of all, don’t send out the same resumé to a bunch of different openings.  Tailor your resumé to fit each position.  For example, Genkinger says, “…they may say, ’seeking to obtain management position’ but they’re applying for an individual contributor position.  Right then and there, I don’t need to read any further because I know I have hundreds, if not thousands of resumés still to review that may target those specific positions”.  Andrew Hudson, who helps people find jobs through his website, AndrewHudsonJobsList.com in Colorado, agrees.  Hudson also told us that if you’re unemployed, you still have a full-time job being the “Chief Marketing Officer for Yourself”. That means, Hudson explains, that you have to get offline to get yourself noticed.  Hudson says, “…it seems cliché, but networking is key.  Seventy percent of folks who get jobs, have gotten jobs as a result of who they know and being able to go to networking parties put on by associations that reflect your industry.”  Still not convinced? Consider this, in June of this year, more than 65 million Americans visited a career-related website.  The message we got while on this story was, much of the world may be in the state-of-the-art electronic age, but throwing back to the out-of-style, get-off-your tail age could be ingenious.  In other words, don’t overestimate the power of the internet while underestimating the impression of good ol’ snail mail. As we were told by a hiring agent who sees hundreds of e-mails a day, “What differentiates a candidate is an old-fashioned card in the mail that’s handwritten, that just says thank you for the interview.  It makes a big difference.”