This advice is intended more for older applicants, who may need rejuvenating, rather than for recent grads)
- Attend trade shows in your area. If you preregister, then the equipment show and keynote address are often free. Use this to absorb the atmosphere, and current buzzwords, and to see what is considered important.
- If you can't afford to attend, then glean buzzwords from the ads for short courses etc. Check the keynote speakers' web sites. They need to publicize themselves, so use that.
- Learn something solid about the current terminology (definition, applications, examples), then work it into your resume and conversation. However, don't try to BS your interviewer; he might know the topic better than you.
- Most university seminars are open to the public and free. Research the speaker in advance so to be able to ask intelligent questions.
- To legitimately make your transcript look current, try to take an independent study course at a local college. You may then get to pick the course title appearing on your transcript.
- Don't just read about new SW; try to install it on your own computer and use it. Even expensive SW often has a free trial.
- Practice your communication skills by putting material on the web, either on your own site or in wikipedia. Watch newsgroups where people post questions and then write answers. This will get you a web presence and improve your writing. Learning how to handle the resulting criticism will also be valuable.
- Do not attempt to play games on your resume. E.g., if you attended Harvard summer school, which has very easy admission, then do not pretend that you attended the 'real' Harvard, which has about a 5% acceptance rate.
- Be precise on your resume. Suppose you say that you attended Miskatonic U, but you don't say whether or not you graduated. I will assume 1) that you did not graduate, and 2) that you are trying to trick me into thinking that you did.
- Do not attempt to BS the interviewer. If you tell me that you know Prolog, I'll ask you to write a simple Prolog program.