When I first started looking for a job as a reporter out of college I hit the big, no-response wall when I sent out my resume.

I sent out endless resumes, to endless publications and got nothing. And I wasn’t picky back then. I just wanted to get a job reporting. I didn’t care about what.

Well, I decided it was my boring resume that was holding my career back. So, being a fine-arts minor, I decided to use color to get my resume noticed. I printed 50 of my resumes on red paper. Not light red paper. Blood red paper. I’m not kidding folks. The printer had to use a very dark ink to make the text readable.

What did I get for the 50 red resumes I sent out. Just one response. That didn’t lead to a job. But hey, I got a response damn it.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know.

Only kidding.

I’m telling you this because it’s okay to get a bit creative with your resume. I’ve talked to hundreds of hiring managers in my job as a career writer and many of them have told me they don’t mind a unique resume if it’s done with taste and it works for the job or company the applicant is applying to.

But hold back on the scratch and sniff resume paper for now. Wacky gimmicks won’t help you in the job hut.

Think smart!

I got an email last week from a reader who did his resume in a Power Point presentation. What a great idea.

“I’m so much more than a flat piece of paper!,” the reader wrote.

I love this guy!

Anyway, it got his foot in the door at the employer he wanted to work for.

So, should you Power Point? Should you go out and make a video resume? Should you send an electronic resume that’s colored red?

The Power Point resume is a great idea, says Michael Neece, Chief Strategy Officer of resume building resource PongoResume. But he suggests sending along a regular resume as well to tweak the interest of the hiring manager so they’re more apt to open the presentation.

And don’t do the Power Point presentation yourself unless you can do a good job at it, he adds. You don’t want a sloppy document to screw up your chances.

Keep it short and sweet, Neece adds, three pages tops. And focus what you want to include as far as your accomplishments. He offered a great guide. STAR: describe the Situation; spell out the Tactics used; talk about the Actions you took; and details your Results.

As for video resumes, Neece says forget them. A recent survey his firm did found that 83 percent of recruiters never even open the video package up. Yikes.

Do things that are memorable and not over the top. What about small icon at the top of the resume page, he suggests. “You send a resume in and the recruiter gets it and suddenly the resume is not ‘Eve’ but the women with the apple on the left hand corner of the resume,” he says.

Alas, I never did the little simple icon. What a great idea. What about a small chef hat for an aspiring chef, or a computer for a tech wannabe?

Anyway, I couldn’t help myself. I had to ask Neece what he would have thought of a blood red resume crossing his desk back in his recruiter days:

“I would have thought, ‘Oh my god, what the hell is this?’”

DOH!