Do sweat the small stuff.

• Position: Job Hunting

"Don't sweat the small stuff" may be a popular philosophy in today's society, but according to an author and job search expert, overlooking the "small stuff" is poor advice for a recent or soon-to-be college graduate seeking that first job. "The people who are successful at finding good jobs straight out of college are usually the ones who understand the importance of addressing the smallest details," maintains John W. "Buddy" Hobart, author of Hire Education: What Every College Grad Should Know About Landing That First Job. "That means preparing a clean, well-written resume, recording a professional-sounding outgoing message on your answering machine, wearing the right kind of shoes to an interview. Everything.

"One of the most-important things today's lob seekers need to understand is that the people making the hiring decisions are increasingly pressed for time. If you're a lob applicant, you must be aware of this." To illustrate this point, Hobart offers a typical scenario of a decisionmaker with a large stack of resumes to review, but only a brief amount of time in which to do it. How will he or she approach this task? "A time-crunched decisionmaker may spend 20 or fewer seconds reviewing a resume. He or she will usually look at the job objective to see if it matches the available position. If there's no objective, the resume will most likely end up in the rejection-letter pile."

Despite this reality, Hobart says many young job seekers unwittingly take themselves out of contention for a lob by failing to include an objective. "Most recent grads don't know exactly what kind of job they Wahl, so either they don't include an objective or else they...