Your boss may have a pretty good idea of what kinds of e-mail you are sending or where you are going with that company truck – and in this modern age, many readers said they aren’t that surprised.

A Life Inc. post on how employers are able to more easily monitor their employees’ communications and behavior prompted some readers to share stories of having e-mail chains quashed or being questioned for bathroom breaks.

But many others said they were well aware of the practice. About four in 10 readers who took our survey said they are very careful about their workplace activities.

 “Anyone monitoring my phone calls, e-mails, etc. will have a pretty boring job most of the time. I'll just wait until they are bored and run in a zinger, just to wake (them) up,” one reader joked.

In fact, many readers said they expected – and understood -  that the boss might be watching.

“Remember work computers, servers, phones etc. belong to the company. They have every right to see what is going on with those things. I know I spend a lot of time at home doing work things. It's a two way street,” one reader wrote.

Still, many also said they should have the right to be told exactly what their employer was monitoring.

“Actually, I'm okay with employers reading employee e-mails and phone records. However, they need to confess that they do this and post it on their HR website along with all the other employee benefits they so graciously provide,” another reader commented.

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Your boss may be watching what you do online.

The idea of a totalitarian government monitoring your every move is probably still the stuff of fiction, but that doesn't mean your boss doesn't have a pretty good idea of your workday habits.

Experts say an abundance of fast-developing new technology is making it cheaper and easier for employers to read your e-mails, check out what you’ve been looking at on the Internet, track where you go with a company car or cell phone and find out when and where you were at work.

“Your employer can find out anything and everything about your life,” said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute, which advocates for workers on issues including privacy.

Of course, employers have good reason to want to know whether employees are stealing corporate secrets, sending out sexually harassing e-mails or just goofing off on the job. But experts say many companies are still trying to figure out a balance between monitoring wrongdoing and just plain snooping.

“In the information economy we have incredible new ways to gather data, many of which are very novel, very new, and we’re not entirely clear on what the standards are or should be,” said Trevor Hughes, chief executive of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, a trade group whose membership includes big corporations such as Google, Microsoft and American Express.

Hughes said that’s been made even more complicated because the line between work and home increasingly is blurred. For example, many employees might use their personal smart phone to send a work-related e-mail at night, and then use their work computer to send a personal e-mail during the work day.

Employers generally have the right to monitor employee e-mails and other online activity that happens at work, or even on a company cell phone or corporate network, said Lothar Determann, a partner at Baker & McKenzie LLP in Palo Alto, Calif., and author of “Determann’s Field Guide to International Data Privacy Law Compliance.” But they can only do so if they make clear to their employees that workers should have no expectation of privacy.

U.S. laws generally give employers much broader rights to monitor employee activity than in European countries, Determann said. That is raising complications for companies that operate in several countries.

But even in the U.S., Determann said companies risk running into trouble if they overstep their bounds. For example, an employer could use a keystroke tracker to get your password to that personal e-mail account you checked at work, and then use that password to check your account later. But he would recommend against a client doing that because it could violate the rights of the e-mail operator.

Many companies also are grappling with the thorny issue of how much control they have over the work activity people do on their personal cell phone or other device.

“It’s an unsettled area right now,” said Robert Sprague, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming College of Business and an expert on privacy and technology.

Related: Having fewer kids, or none at all, because of the economy?

The idea of asking employees or job candidates for access to personal social media accounts such as Facebook also has caused widespread outcry, and lawmakers in several states have moved to ban such practices.

Employees may be generally aware that their employer could monitor their activities, but Maltby said many people assume that with all that data flying around their individual correspondence won’t be tracked. In reality, he said, people are nosy and anyone from the IT guy to your boss may be tempted to peruse your activities.

To maintain privacy, he recommends sending any personal e-mails or other correspondence from a personal cell phone or device that isn’t connected to your corporate network.

Others say that it’s generally fine to send a few innocuous personal e-mails at work, or check a personal website now and again. But that rant about the CEO that you’re tempted to send your co-worker? Probably not a good idea.

 “If you don’t want your boss to read it, then don’t send the e-mail,” Determann said.

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A good boss can help your career. A bad boss? Not so much.

A good boss can make your career, but a bad boss can make your life miserable – and a new survey finds that plenty of Americans have learned that lesson the hard way.

The survey of about 2,000 adults, conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of the careers website Glassdoor, found that two-thirds of people said their boss had had some kind of impact on their career.

For about half of those people, the impact had been positive and their bosses had helped their careers. For about 20 percent, it had been negative and their bosses had hurt their careers. The remainder said the impact had been neither positive nor negative.

Experts say the results make sense, since other research has shown that being happy with a boss directly influences job satisfaction.

“Immediate bosses have a tremendous impact on both people’s job satisfaction and their careers, for good or bad,” said E. Allan Lind, a professor of leadership at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Your relationship with your boss also is often a good predictor of how well you do at your job.

“People may join an organization because of pay or benefits or a charismatic leader,” said David Grossman, chief executive of the communications and leadership consultancy The Grossman Group. “How long they stay, how productive they are, how content they are, is all about their boss.”

Unfortunately, not all bosses are good at managing people, just as not all workers are good at managing their relationship with their boss.

The most common gripes among those who reported a boss had hurt their career were that their boss had slowed or held back pay raises, promotions and exposure to top management.

Lind, the Duke professor, said one of the strongest predictors of leadership talent is whether bosses share credit for success.

 “Some people, when they’re relatively insecure, think, ‘I have to grab all the credit for myself.’ They don’t understand that when your people perform well, you’ll perform well,” Lind said.

That can lead to another big boss mistake: Micromanaging.

Among the people who reported that their boss had helped their career, almost half said their boss had supported collaborative teamwork. That was an even more popular response than things like supporting work/life balance or helping the employee get a promotion.

Lind said it can be really difficult for bosses to delegate tasks to others. Many bosses also have a hard time making sure they are giving serious consideration to other people’s opinions and ideas.

“The challenge for a boss is to not dominate the conversation. That kills the purpose of the team,” Lind said.

Of course, a boss/employee relationship cuts two ways, and there are plenty of things employees can do to make a bad boss relationship better.

One tactic is to think about what is keeping your boss up at night and how you can solve that problem, Lind said. 

Grossman said that rather than blaming the boss, workers should spend their energy trying to turn things around. If you want a raise or promotion, tell your boss - but frame it in a way that will help your boss, too.

 “Do it in a way that they can see how they will benefit from what (you’re) talking about,” Grossman said.

Of course, some boss relationships just can’t be salvaged. In the last few years, many employees have been asked to do more work with fewer people, and not every boss has done a good job keeping their remaining workers happy.  

Many of the people in the survey who said their manager had hurt their career complained that their boss had reduced or eliminated support for maintaining work/life balance.

Even in a tight job market, Grossman said that may be why only 20 percent of the people surveyed said their boss had hurt their career.

“When you work for a bad boss, you don’t work for them very long,” Grossman said.

Love it or hate it, many of us will rely on Social Security. And that’s making a lot of us very nervous.

This week in Life Inc., we wrote about how the latest plan to tweak Social Security is unpopular with both liberal and conservative thinkers. The story prompted tens of thousands of readers to weigh in on their hopes, fears and frustrations about the retirement safety net.

Many readers said they would like to see Congress take steps now to address the funding shortfalls that are projected in years to come.

“Fix the program now - while it's still ‘easy.’ Later changes will cost much more. We can lessen the impact to the less-wealthy recipients,” one reader wrote.

That’s not surprising, given how many readers said they will need those monthly checks in old age.

More than half of the nearly 36,000 readers who took our survey said they plan to rely on Social Security for day-to-day expenses.

Many Americans simply haven’t saved enough money to fund their retirement, especially now that the burden of saving has started shifting toward self-directed 401(k) plans and away from company pensions.

“I have my own retirement account, but it's not going to pay my total expenses. I'll need the Social Security benefits I've earned,” one reader wrote.

For others, Social Security has become a lifeline after losing other savings during the Great Recession and weak recovery.

“I lost all my money on a business that was too small to save in 2009. (unlike Wall st and GM) I only have SS to live on now,” another wrote.

For many Americans – including about 37 percent of those who took our survey – Social Security will be a key supplement to other savings.

“I'm not relying on it but it is a big share of my retirement plan. I worked and earned it! I should get the fair share my parents did!” one reader wrote.

About 10 percent of our readers were more cynical about the future of Social Security. They said they weren’t planning on getting that monthly check once they retired.

“If I get SS, great - but I'm planning and saving as if I'll never get anything from it,” one wrote.

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Not all parents can expect to get generous paid parental leave, experts say.

Hey working moms and dads, just because Yahoo employees are getting more generous parental leave benefits doesn’t mean you should expect those perks, too.

Under Yahoo’s new policy, new moms who give birth are eligible for up to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave, with benefits. New dads can get up to eight weeks of paid paternity leave with benefits, according to Yahoo.

The new parents also get $500 to spend on housecleaning and other needs, according to the new policy made public Tuesday.

The policy basically doubles the amount of leave that many new moms who work at Yahoo will receive after pregnancy, according to NBCBayArea.com.

Experts say that kind of paid leave may be available at other top-tier technology companies, but it’s a far cry from what most working parents can expect when their bundle of joy arrives.

“There’s no question” that Yahoo’s parental benefits are more generous than most, said Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center, which does research and advocacy work for working women.

Kenneth Matos, senior director of employment research and practice at the Families and Work Institute, said the benefits for new dads, in particular, are far outside the norm.

“I think it’s definitely a step above what a lot of generally men -  and in the case of same-sex couples, sometimes women -  can expect when their partner has a child,”  Matos said.

Matos’s research shows that only 30 percent of U.S. employers offer paid or unpaid maternity leave that is greater than 12 weeks.

Matos also said that 58 percent of employers who provide maternity leave pay new moms for at least some of that time off. Only 14 percent of employers who provide paternity leave pay for some of the dads’ time off, according to the Families and Work Institute data.

Many employers argue that it is cost-prohibitive to provide generous paid leave when their workers have babies. Particularly for low-wage workers, advocates such as Graves said becoming a new parent can be a significant financial and emotional stress.

“You don’t want people having to choose between their own economic security (and) having that time to bond and take care of their family,” she said.

The United States is an outlier among developed countries because it generally does not require employers to provide paid parental leave. According to Graves, only two states – California and New Jersey – mandate that employers provide paid leave after a worker gives birth.

About 60 percent of U.S. employees are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act, which gives parents the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave following the birth of a child, according to the Department of Labor.

The FMLA benefit is only available to employees who work in an office with 50 or more employees and have worked 1,250 hours in the previous year.

A Census Bureau study released in 2011 found that 51 percent of working women who had their first baby between 2006 and 2008 received some sort of paid leave, such as paid maternity leave, sick leave or vacation.

That’s up from 42 percent of first-time working moms who had their first child between 1996 and 2000, according to the Census Bureau.

Yahoo’s announcement Tuesday comes after a tumultuous year for the technology company. It has come under fire from work/life balance advocates for nixing telecommuting, and some also criticized new CEO and mom Marissa Mayer  for her decision to take a very short maternity leave.

Experts who advocate for more time off for women say they hope Yahoo’s move will spur other employers to offer more generous leave policies.

“The more you can make it possible for people to take care of their personal needs during life- changing moments, the easier it is for them to get back to being productive employees as well,” Matos said.

The nation’s corporations have been turning in record profits of late, and yet you wouldn't necessarily know it from how their employees are being rewarded.

A Life Inc. post this week looked at how many at-work perks are disappearing even as many are being asked to work longer and harder.

Many said it’s a recipe for unhappiness.

“20 years with this company. There used to be so many little, cheap perks that were real motivators. Now there's virtually nothing,” one reader wrote. “I'm happy to have a job - and a decent one - but it is hard to watch the salaries of senior executives double in those 20 years....and profits higher....and none of the lower rank-and-file employees able to reap any of the rewards.”

Many lamented that their employees seem to think it’s better to motivate by fear than to give a pat on the back for a job well done.

“Our company has the ‘Princess Bride’ motivation package - Goodnight, sleep tight. I'll most likely fire you in the morning,” one reader joked.

But others said they don’t need perks – they’d rather have a raise.

“Spare the pat on the back. Give me the money,” one wrote.

High school and college graduates are still being hobbled by years of weak economic growth and an extremely tight job market, and that difficult start in the job market could impact the class of 2013 for years to come, a new analysis finds.

“Graduating in a bad economy has long-lasting economic consequences,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist with the Economic Policy Institute, which prepared the report on young workers released Wednesday.

The liberal-leaning think tank looked at high school graduates between ages 17 and 20 who aren’t enrolled in further schooling, as well as college graduates between ages 21 and 24 who have a bachelor’s degree and aren’t seeking further education.

The analysis found that the unemployment rate for the high school grads who aren’t going to college has improved somewhat since hitting a high of 32.7 percent in 2010, but not enough to give young workers (and their parents) much comfort.

An average of 29.9 percent of high school grads between ages 17 and 20 who weren’t enrolled in further schooling were unemployed and actively looking for work between March 2012 and February of 2013, according to their analysis. That’s up from an average of 17.5 percent in 2007, when the job market was much stronger because the recession had not yet begun.

Getting a college degree still greatly improves people’s job prospects, but many young college graduates also continue to struggle to find a job after many years of high unemployment and dim job prospects.

The unemployment rate for young, recent college graduates who weren’t furthering their education stood at an average of 8.8 percent between March of 2012 and February of 2013, according to the EPI analysis. That’s down from an average of 10.4 percent in 2010, but still much higher than 5.7 percent in 2007.

The EPI report noted that more than half of young high school graduates were enrolled in a college or university, following a long-term trend toward more young Americans heading to college. Still, many are finding it difficult to finance the increasing cost of education, and the weak job market could make it hard for those young people to pay off their student loan debt.

That's especially true if they can’t land a well-paying job. The EPI analysis found that young high school grads were making an average of $9.48 an hour in 2012, while young college grads were earning an average of $16.60 an hour.

Both groups have seen wages fall in the past decade as the economy has weakened, according to EPI’s analysis. That could turn out to be a big problem for young workers because when you start out your career at a lower wage, it can take years and years to catch up.

According to EPI’s analysis, the class of 2013 could be earning less than they might have in a stronger economy for as long as 10 or 15 years.

Shierholz noted that the unemployment rate for young workers is always higher than average, and that’s especially true in times of economic distress. Now, she said, young workers are in a particularly tough place mainly because the overall job market has been so tough for so long.

 “The unemployment rate of young workers is exactly what we would expect it to be just given the broader weakness in the labor market,” Shierholz said.

The overall unemployment rate fell to 7.6 percent in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But economists weren’t cheered by the drop because it came as many Americans stopped looking for work and therefore were no longer counted in the tally. The unemployment rate only includes people who have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.

Related:

It still pays to go to college, new data suggests

The high cost of college has left some Americans questioning whether it pays to pursue a higher education, especially at a time when jobs remain scarce.

A new batch of government data suggests it's worth the investment, even in a tight economy.

People with a college degree earned nearly twice as much as people with a high school degree in the last three months of 2011, a Census Bureau report released Tuesday found.

The Census report showed that the median – or midpoint – of personal earnings for people with a high school degree was $5,984 in the last three months of 2011. That compares to median earnings of $11,749 for those with a college degree.

People with a post-graduate degree - such as doctors, lawyers and MBAs -  fared even better. They had median personal earnings of $15,733 for the three-month period, the Census report found.

Soaring tuition costs have left many Americans reconsidering whether a higher education is worth the long-term payoff. Many are especially worried about the number of Americans who are struggling to pay off thousands of dollars in student loan debt when it is tough to find good-paying jobs.

But proponents argue that the cost of college can be worth it, if students are careful about the school and major they choose, and don’t take on too much debt. Besides higher earnings, they note that college graduates are more likely to be employed. The unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher was 3.8 percent in January, compared with 7.9 percent for those with a high school degree.

A separate report from Pew Charitable Trusts, released in January, found that 21- to 24-year-olds with a college degree saw smaller drops in both employment and wages than those without a college degree. That suggests that the extra education helped them weather the recession better than their less-educated peers.

Tip of the hat to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on this data.

Related:

Economy leaves many returning students disappointed, deep in debt
The majors with the best job prospects

Symphonie / Getty Images stock

As the job market improves, more workers may tell their employers to take this job and shove it.

They’ve slogged through years of belt-tightening and downsizing, and endured endless requests to work harder, smarter or just plain longer.

Now, experts say signs of life in the job market could start pushing some employees to do what they’ve been dreaming about, perhaps for years: quit. Too bad their employers probably won't see it coming.

“Most companies are probably not fully prepared for all the  …  pent up turnover that is likely to come when the job market really turns around,” said David G. Allen, a management professor at the University of Memphis who has studied employee turnover extensively.

Experts say employers appear to have grown pretty complacent about whether their employees will find a better job somewhere else. And even as many bosses have complained about how hard it is to find good workers, few have paid much attention to keeping the ones they have.

“People are saying that they can’t find the right talent, and yet when they do, they don’t take such good care of it,” said Sandi Edwards, senior vice president of AMA Enterprise, an arm of the American Management Association that helps companies improve their workforce.

For the most part, employers haven’t had to work too hard recently to keep good workers. The unemployment rate hit a high of 10 percent in the fall of 2009, just as the nation was officially coming out of recession, and it has remained elevated even as the economy has slowly added jobs.

The jobless rate stood at 7.7 percent in February, with 12 million Americans actively looking for work.  The March unemployment report is scheduled to be released Friday.

That’s left many workers grateful just to have a job, and finding that few new jobs were available if they didn’t like their current one. The job market is improving, but Allen cautions that it isn’t strong enough yet for employees to really have the upper hand.

There were 3.69 million job openings in January, according to government data, up from about 3.42 million in January of 2012. About 4.25 million people were hired in January, up from 4.12 million a year earlier.

But in some fields, experts say they are starting to see workers leave for better offers.

Paul McDonald, senior executive director of staffing firm Robert Half International, said employers are already seeing it in areas such as specialized accounting.

“If there are employers around and they haven’t experienced staff leaving them yet, they will shortly,” he predicted.

McDonald said some employers may be aware that the risk of losing their best employees is on the horizon, but they aren’t necessarily taking the right steps to stop it.

A recent Robert Half survey of 2,100 chief financial officers found that 38 percent said retaining valuable staff was a top concern for the next year, but only 13 percent said improving morale and engagement was a top concern. He thinks it’s a mistake not to be working harder to make employees happy.

 “The main reason people leave is unhappiness with management,” McDonald said. 

It’s not necessarily a bad thing for some unhappy employees to quit. Peter Hom, a management professor at Arizona State University, noted that workers who are just there because they can’t find a better job aren’t usually the best ones, anyway.

“They don’t perform as well or they don’t engage in a lot of things that fall outside of their job description,” he said.

Related story: Want to be happier at work? Try goofing off

Still, Allen notes that that the first employees to quit when the job market improves are usually the ones you least want to lose. That’s because a company’s most valuable employees are often the most sought after.

Many researchers argue that it’s not just money that keeps workers loyal, although a nice pay package and good benefits certainly help. But Allen said his research has shown that workers also place tremendous importance on relationships with other colleagues, and especially bosses.

“I think smart companies need to make sure that they’re making their employees feel valued,” Allen said. “If they’re asking more from them, then they have to give more, in some way. It doesn’t necessarily have to be money.”

Slideshow: The election of Pope Francis

Cardinals from around the world gathered in the Vatican to elect the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.

Launch slideshow

He dresses modestly, pays his own hotel bills, personally greets parishioners and insists on taking the bus with his colleagues instead of riding in his lush private car.

Pope Francis has held Catholicism’s highest position for less than a week, and yet he has already grabbed the attention of Catholics and non-Catholics alike with his humble, down-to-earth style of leadership.

Experts say it’s a smart move for a man who has just picked to lead an organization desperate to regain the public’s trust and reinvigorate its many workers. In fact, it’s something that many American chief executive officers could learn from.

“Leadership of anything means mission first and your self-interest last,” said Michael Useem, director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “That’s the very definition of what it means to lead.”

There’s no doubt that most chief executives work hard on behalf of their employees, customers and shareholders. But experts note that in recent years, many also have become further and further removed from both the lifestyle of their employees and workings of their companies.

“Weirdly enough, in this Woodstock generation, (CEOs) are more insulated and pampered and elevated than any before,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, head of The Chief Executive Leadership Institute at the Yale School of Management.

Many large-company CEOs travel by corporate jet and work in offices that could be thousands of miles from the shop floor, surrounded by a staff of aides and public relations experts who limit their exposure to employees, investors and the public.

It’s also no longer uncommon to demand compensation packages in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. The lavish pay was a main theme of recent protests about the growing gap between the so-called 1 percent of the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers and the remaining 99 percent of the public.

Pope Francis seems intent on going in the opposite direction. His now-famous frugal lifestyle is in contrast even to many others in the Roman Catholic Church and also is a powerful symbol of his commitment to building what he recently termed “a poor church for the poor.”

That mission comes after several years in which the church has been plagued by scandal and struggled to adjust to changing mores.

Chief executives acting in a time of crisis also can build, or ruin, their reputations depending on the examples they set.

Former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit drew accolades in 2009 when he agreed to take a salary of just $1 as the nation was grappling with a recession and the results of the financial crisis. But not long after, he was seen as a symbol of overly lavish pay when Citi’s shareholders voted down his $15 million pay package. He stepped down last fall.

It’s about perks as well as pay. Newly appointed Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer drew intense criticism from some working parents after her company’s decision to ban employees from working from home, especially when reports surfaced that Mayer had allegedly built a nursery next to her office for her own young son.

Some chief executives have found that they are able to build morale, and gain customers, by regularly mixing among their workers. Sonnenfeld noted that JetBlue Airways founder David Neeleman was known for regularly flying in coach alongside his customers and even occasionally working as a flight attendant.

The style drew a lot of acclaim, but he was replaced in 2007 after the company suffered a big black eye over storm-related travel snafus. He has since founded Azul Brazilian Airlines.

Donald Hambrick, a management professor at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business who has studied CEO narcissism, said chief executives who spend time with rank-and-file employees may have more information on which to base decisions than those who only surround themselves with top execs and other CEOs.

Still, he said that to be an effective leader you also have to make clear that although you are listening to your employees and customers, you are in charge and will ultimately make the tough calls.

Hambrick said there’s no strong evidence that being humble makes you a better leader. But he also noted that there’s no evidence that being particularly authoritarian works better, either.

“If you can lead an organization without making people miserable, why don’t you do it that way?” Hambrick said. “There’s no evidence that you have to make people miserable to be a good leader.”

Related:

How the Vatican's finances work

No doubt about it, many working parents are stressed out. But is there a better alternative?

A Life Inc. post this week about a Pew study showing that both working moms and working dads are stressed out by juggling job and family responsibilities prompted readers to debate whether it would be back to go back to a system where Mom was more likely to stay home full time.

Some readers said they are pining for the days glorified by the television show “Leave It To Beaver.”

“Ahhh, wouldn't it be nice if it were the 50s all over again when the moms stayed home and were there for the kids! I guess I was lucky growing up in a ‘Beaver Cleaver’ type family! I am all for women's lib, but I think this is one of the big downfalls of women working full time as well as the man,” one reader wrote.

But others argued that things are better today. One reader said his grandmother stayed home with the kids while his grandfather worked, leaving Grandpa with little time with this family but lots of financial stress.

“Now compare that to today. I have one child. Both my wife and I work outside the home (always have) and we do our absolute best to share ALL household and child rearing responsibilities. As such I have a closer bond with my daughter and I am more informed than my grandfather ever was with his children. And I do not need shoulder the financial burdens alone. One loses a job we have the others income and vice versa,” he wrote.

Although more moms are working, they’re also still doing more of the housework and child care. More than half of the nearly 6,000 readers who took our poll said mom is taking on more of the home responsibilities, while nearly three in 10 said it’s an even split.

Some readers noted that it’s much easier to balance work and family responsibilities if you have another ingredient: Money.

One reader recalled when she and her husband first had a child and went so far as to wash clothes and diapers in the tub. Years later, she said, the couple has the money to hire a housecleaner, send the kids to private school and splurge on a babysitter for date night.

“Money makes the difference and anyone that tells you different has never been poor,” she said.

With more than 12 million Americans unemployed, job candidates are struggling to stand out – so much that some are going to extreme lengths to present creative -- and sometimes outlandish -- resumes.

There’s the husband in Sylvania, Ohio who last summer paid for an electronic billboard ad touting his wife’s qualifications (imploring, “Please Hire My Wife”). Designer Melissa Washin delicately sewed her resume into fabric, sized like resume paper, when she was in college. In Paris, Philippe Dubost's resume, a mock-up of an Amazon item for sale, went viral.

For some employers, resumes with flair have the desired effect. Ada Famulari, who runs the internship program at the TODAY Show, said she sees hundreds of resumes throughout the year – when a fat envelope stuffed with cookies arrived on her desk, it was at the top of the pile.

“It bypassed my pile of resumes,” Famulari said. “I opened up the envelope and found a resume for an internship. And I thought, ‘Wow. You know it could have taken me a week to get to that resume but it moved to the front immediately.’ ”  

Dubost, who created the Amazon ad, appears to have had success with his unorthodox resume, which links to his LinkedIn profile, lists his fastest marathon time (3:22) and, if you click on the “Add to wedding registry” link, a cheeky pop-up warns: “Not happening.” Dubost reported on his Tumblr that his ad attracted 1.3 million unique visitors, and that he is currently negotiating for a job.

Washin, the designer-seamstress, landed her first job out of college at a global fragrance manufacturer. She is currently transitioning to Etsy, where she will be a product manufacturer. Reached by phone Thursday, Washin said she’s often been asked whether creative resumes are a good idea.

“It made sense for me as a designer to do something more creative,” she said. “But someone applying to the insurance industry, maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to present a resume on fabric. You could do something related to that industry, maybe a little ‘Approved’ stamp, or place a resume on an insurance application form, or something a little special you can do that makes it a little relevant.”

Some career coaches don’t advise over-the-top resumes, however.

Jane Cranston, a career coach with Executive Coach NY, told NBCNews.com: “It’s like getting on a dating site and putting up a naked picture of yourself.”

Cranston added: “You could attract a lot of waste-of-time wackos.”

Related content:

• Job search gimmicks get attention but maybe not jobs
• Social media profiles replacing resumes in the job hunt

Have you created an unlikely resume? Tell us about it in the comments -- and whether you were successful.