App help with finding - or quitting - that job

Need a job? Smartphone applications by the dozens offer help. This selection can provide you with a nearly instant resume, give pointers for getting and surviving interviews, and even assist you in quitting a job with flair.

Pocket Resume, $2.99 for Android and Apple, is by Mani Ghasemlou. About 30 seconds after I'd opened the app for the first time, it accessed my LinkedIn account - with my permission - and generated a bare-bones resume from my profile information on that social-networking site. It gave me the option then of making some basic style changes and then e-mailing the resume or storing it in a Dropbox cloud account.

For a fuller resume, with all the stuff I haven't divulged on LinkedIn about my vast experience and inexhaustible skills, the app presents a series of simple forms for filling in personal information, work history, and accomplishments.

All that gets added to the former bare-bones resume in the order you choose, and you can save it either as a .pdf document or in rich text format for editing in Microsoft Word or one of its clones.

How to Get a Job Interview, free from Docstoc Inc. for Apple devices, is mostly a collection of job-hunting-advice videos on a wide variety of topics organized into several chapters with titles that include "Get Noticed," "Ace the Interview," and "Seal the Deal."

Videos cover networking, the importance of body language, and the do's and don'ts of negotiating a job offer.

In addition, the app includes templates for resumes and cover letters, sample job application forms, and advice on how to write a "killer" resume, how to dress for job advancement, and, for employers, how to ask "awesome questions" during an interview to make applicants squirm.

How to Use LinkedIn . . . to get a job, free for Android and Apple, by Epic Mobile, uses about 20 short instructional videos and written guides to explain why the 175 million-member LinkedIn site is useful for making and building business contacts and how to start using it to look for work.

If your problem is not finding a job, but ditching one, iQuit! Resignation Generator, free for iPhone from Moose Mist Studios, is the app for you. It lets you choose from a selection of "War" or "Peace" letters of resignation to e-mail to the boss from the comfort of . . . anyplace. Once you choose, you have to tap through a series of buttons to be doubly, then triply sure you really intend to send the note. Then you get a cheerful screen message: "Your job is gone!"