Over the past several months we have received numerous inquiries regarding proper resume etiquette, ranging from "Should I provide my salary history?" to "What if I don’t want human resources to know my real name?" While we can’t possibly respond to all of your emails (really, we’re just not that qualified), we at Drink at Work.com want to take this opportunity to answer your most typical questions. It’s our way of maintaining some thin veneer of professional aptitude while preventing any of our readers from ever submitting a resume that features the entry "1996—2004: Got to know the real me. Also, ate a lot of cereal."

How important is a cover letter?
Consider a cover letter the teaser trailer to the movie that is your resume. Rather than simply stating "I am writing to apply to your job posting" or "I believe I would make a very, really good editor type person" whet your potential employer’s appetite with such tantalizing statements as: "In a world gone mad, only one man was the sane choice"; "Tellinger & Associates was about to end it all until he came into their lives"; "It’s a story about the lives we lead, the people we know and the skills to properly assess budgetary concerns"; "He was the best statistician in the business, but he didn’t count on her"; "Little did they know that he would be the one teaching them"; "He had only one career objective in mind—revenge"; "For unemployed graphic illustrator Donald Feyman it was no routine homicide"; and "Based on a true story."

Is it always crucial to list a precise career objective?
Many people dabble in several trades without ever achieving proficiency in one. Take our office plumber, for example. Not only does he fix our bathrooms but he also handles our corporate taxes, provides grief counseling and serves as our own unlicensed surgeon in case an employee is shot in the line of duty (say, like after mouthing off during an Excel presentation). Does he actually provide an adequate service in any of those job functions? Frankly, no. Since he’s joined our company we’ve had three audits, two jumpers and more than one humor site’s fair share of botched cardiovascular operations. Plus, we can’t flush a toilet in our office without flooding the sub-basement and the daycare center (both of which actually occupy the same room along with our open medicine bottles, collection of randomly placed sharp knives and the official company rottweiler, "Mr. Chomp-Chomp"). Why did we put such a clearly incompetent man in charge of so many facets of our company despite the fact that under computer skills he wrote "Played Lode Runner"? Because he never specified a career objective. To us the fact that he couldn’t narrow his choice to one clearly meant that he could do it all, including heading our New Sales Development department (a department that, under his demanding supervision, has now seen "50 First Dates" six times during office hours). And since we currently are the only company we know of that has lost two-thirds of its usable workspace due to poor drainage it’s a safe bet that other businesses are in the habit of demanding prospective employees list something specific under "career objective." Alas, for us, it was a lesson learned all too late.

How long should my resume be, one page or two?
It’s a known fact that most human resources personal spend an average of only 15 seconds reading a resume. However, it is also known that they spend a full ten minutes admiring their own physiques in the restroom mirror, 12 minutes sliding up and down the office hallway in their socks, almost a half-hour looking up dirty words on Google, a total of three hours a day asking themselves "will it be hazelnut or French vanilla?", 42 minutes shifting in their chairs trying to un-bunch their underwear without anyone noticing and a good hour-and-a-half using their fingers to repeatedly beat out a tune on their desk that to them sounds exactly like the theme song to "Hawaii 5-0" but to every coworker within earshot sounds exactly like "BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM." Do these sound like the kind of people who want to bother flipping to "page two"? Do these sound like the kind of people who should be deciding your professional fate? Instead, why not cut out the middleman? Just follow the company boss to his home, meet him at his front door before he has a chance to frantically find his house key or scream for his kids to let him in and plead your case using such attention-getting remarks like "No, no, you HAVE to listen to me!" Trust us, compared to going through HR your chances of getting hired can only improve.

What if I don’t have enough professional experience to fill even a single resume page?
Well, like the saying goes, "we all have to start somewhere." But when you start with your thumb up your ass there’s very little chance some employer will say, "Pull that thing out and shake my hand! You’re our new senior vice-president!" Face it, if you don’t have the imagination to fill up a single piece of paper how the hell can you be expected to have the creativity to function properly in the business world? That’s why we suggest you simply start typing, filling the empty space with anything that pops in your head until you reach the page break. Sure, few people expect to come across prose while reading a resume, much less prose that goes "Looks like it’s going to rain today should have bought an umbrella or at least a jacket not made of leather but I guess I don’t have to go out to the theater besides that movie’s bound to be on DVD soon and then I can get a friend to rent it." But business is, well, a volume business. The more you have to say on paper, the more professional you are bound to appear, even if you use up half your sheet to list every song that features Dave Grohl on drums.

Finally, when writing your resume never list any activity or experience that’s more than ten years old. Employers can be busy people and so are not interested in your college GPA, your high school summer jobs or how you wowed the critics with your stirring portrayal of the cobbler’s no-account brother-in-law in your third grade class production of "Shoemaker and the Elves." (Or, if you attended a private school, your role as Second Tempter in your kindergarten’s production of "Murder in the Cathedral.") Be concise, be direct and when it comes time to list your references always put down "Available upon request" and not "I’ve never really been a people person."