During the course of the recruitment process, you will inevitably be asked to provide contact details for, on average, four to six references.

This installment of Career Intelligence evaluates how you can best utilize the rapidly expanding social media communities to aid you in your online presence and branding.

In previous columns I have discussed individual self-assessment of your personal style and soft skills that aid in development of a career plan and can help convey your message in a resume.

A new survey has found that 88 percent or organizations uncovered a misrepresentation on a resume and 84 percent reported that verifying new hires' previous employment history and education credentials uncovered issues that would not have been found otherwise.

Your resume is a marketing document. Too much information presented as a career biography may not achieve the results you are hoping for. A recruiter or hiring manager, who has never met you, will judge you by its content and appearance alone, and decide whether you deserve further consideration for the role in which you have expressed interest. A brief, clear, attractive resume will recommend you more highly to a recruiter than a long-winded, poorly designed one will – even if the content is the same. The time investment is significant, even if produced with the assistance of a professional writer.