Dear Joyce: I enjoyed reading your column about recruiters, online résumés that live eternally on the Internet and the résumé's lack of privacy protection. You're right.

I am in the recruiting industry and want to pass on a few ideas to your readers that may be of assistance:

Get Free E-mail First set up a free e-mail account with Yahoo!, Hotmail or the like, and only place that e-mail address as contact information on your résumé. This way you are not bombarded with phone calls at work or at home and the free e-mail address you intend only for recruiters can be closed or ignored at any time.

Give No Name Next, I recommend that you find a Web site to post that does not require your name, address and phone number. But if that's required, you can enter seven nine's -- 9999999 -- for each of those fields. Then, even if the original site sends the résumé on to other sites, your personal information is never revealed.

Résumé Spam It is not uncommon for recruiters in my industry to take résumés off the Net and send them out to many companies without the candidates ever knowing it.

If a recruiting firm cannot send you a job order with details about the position and the employer, be wary of who you are dealing with. Companies that work with staffing firms usually have some type of job description they send to their recruiters in order to market the position. -- Steven Gatz, The Insource Group, Plano, Texas

Dear Steven Gatz: Thanks for the tip. I've also heard of a slight variation to protect privacy in online résumés. In this version, you make up a name followed parenthetically by the words "screen name" -- Able Smith (Screen Name). For street address, use a postal box. Otherwise, cloaking your identity is as you've described: For telephone number, write seven nines. For e-mail address, give one you've set up for Able Smith at a free service.

Like job seekers in this ever-worsening market, recruiters are scratching for assignments. Market research firm Hunt-Scanlon Advisors has lowered its 2001 revenue forecast for the executive search industry, projecting the industry will decline at least 30 percent this year.

Recruiting chief executives earlier this year expected a third quarter industry rebound, but now most aren't holding their breath for an upturn for at least a year, according to the Hunt-Scanlon study.

Other researchers are weighing in with similar predictions, such as a long, cold winter for executive-level hiring. If you're stymied, figure out a way to use your down time constructively -- take that course you've been eyeing, accept contract work, seek consulting gigs -- so you'll have a better-than-average reason to explain employment gaps later.

Even if gloomy predictions for the near-future job market prove true, remember those job seekers who are connected (with people who know who you are and what you can do), hard working (at finding a new job) and resourceful (at thinking out of the box) find rewarding jobs in any economy. But be prepared for your search to drag out longer.

Superior Résumés If you're among those dunked in the layoff pool, you're probably feeling a loss of control. One thing you can control is your résumé. Spend plenty of time getting it right and reviewing it with peers, or hire someone to do it for you. The truth is that really smart people can write really dumb résumés.

Every now and then I come across a standout résumé that I haven't seen a gazillion times before. Take a look at writer and editor Joel Rosenberg's document on his Web site.

Rosenberg's flush-right layout doesn't hurt its online distribution, and it works well on paper because readers tend to thumb through a stack of résumés at the upper right hand corner. His asides to the reader add sizzle, somewhat like an actor speaking to an audience.

Rosenberg's flair and freshness work for him because he's in a highly creative field. But if you're in a button-down business, a more conservative approach works better.

Resources Find career-change book titles online at Impact Publications, a career superstore.

Send career questions for possible use in this column to Joyce Lain Kennedy at Box 368, Cardiff, CA 92007, or e-mail her at jlk@sunfeatures.com. Sorry, the volume of mail makes personal replies impossible.

©2001 Tribune Media Services, Inc.