Here at the Corporate Office, I am the front lobby secretary, and as applicants come in to interview, they have to fill out an official application. I love this part of my job. I get to spy on all the applicants before they even get their foot in the door. I only read five parts:
1. The position applied for. This tells me what they are in for. straight forward.
2. The salary requested. It has always been told to me that it is rather pretentious to ask for any kind of salary, and rather risky. If you ask for too little, they might think you are unqualified for the position, maybe you don't have that much experience or maybe you think your own work isn't worth the big bucks. If you ask too much, maybe they will overlook you, because you don't fit their budget, or they might think you are too high on yourself and that might be a turnoff all together. I was always taught to put "open" next to salary. Sell yourself, then use your attributes as leverage for as high a salary as they are willing to pay. Get more than you got at your last job, but don't reach too high and get the infamous "don't call us , we'll call you", cause that's a sure sign you blew it.
3. The section that says "list any school memberships, or acheivements". This one is my fav. If I were a hiring manager for HR, I would base my decision solely on this little tid bit of info right here. And this section is the smallest on the whole application. It looks like no one cares what you write there or don't write there. Like they will look at your work hist and your masters degree and offer you a pos. Well, if I had anything to do with it, I would look at all the little things that IMO matter much more than degrees. I always put my acheivments from past jobs. I even put the *meaningless* award I got on my first job called "marketing people pleaser award" ...(no lude comments please). I don't even know what I got this for, but whatever. I got a tshirt and a piece of paper with my name on it. I also list any sales awards and, since I have them, my internship awards. I would like to put my school memberships, but I'm afraid late nights and free booze washed away all memories of the club meetings.
4. Hobbies. Now this is a tricky one. You only want to put sophisticated or sympathy-reeling entries here. You can't put "cars" or "sewing"...too ghetto and too boring, respectively. I would accept "baking" or "volunteer work", as long as you don't say "american red cross volunteer" if all you did was give blood once on campus cause they gave you a free shirt. I like to put "Small Animal Rescue". If they want, they can look it up. I have a registered yahoo group (which doesn't mean much cause a monkey with internet access could have a group on yahoogroups), but it gets the job done. Listing "small animal rescue" suddenly transforms me from a paper resume into a breathing human who would be kind and respectful in a work environment. haha...fooled them again!
5. Additional info. Be careful again. You DO NOT put things like " I love your company" or " I shop at your store". Cheesiness will get you NO WHERE. I usually put things that you can find at the bottom of my resume that I know no one looks at. Things like "speak, read, and write in Spanish", or "took courses in Business Management and Calc 1 and 2", just little tid bits that make the HR dept think...hmmm... this person paid attention in school and really learned something.

This is not meant as advise in any way, just a random observation from all the applicants I see walk thru here. I can pretty much tell who's going to get thru and who's resume is going in the trash when they leave.
MWAAAHAAAHAAAAA!!!!