In the past whenever applying to a job I have tried to go a step beyond what the employer might have requested. In a few cases the requirement was C++, so what better way to demonstrate your skills than writing a C++ program? After some thinking I decided that a C++ based resume would be a good sample. So, I ended up writing a program that renders my resume almost exactly as it would have been rendered by Microsoft Word. Instead of hard coding the complete resume I wrote a text rendering engine that reads an array of string and renders it on screen based on some simple rules.
To make it simple for the hiring manager to run this program I embedded the text in a string array so they can just pass the exe around without having to worry about sending multiple files. The program works just as well reading from a text file. Here is a quick screenshot of this program.
So, what extra steps have you taken to increase your chance of getting an interview?