Monster has managed a coup over rival CareerBuilder, partnering with Microsoft to power the software company’s new consumer career center.

Where jobseekers browse MS Office templates for resumes, Monster’s name now appears prominently as the power behind the career information. A how-to job search video on the site includes both companies. In a section titled “Four steps to your next job” step one informs jobseekers:

“Monster.com and Office Online are teaming up to make the whole job search process faster and easier.

“Office Online provides templates for your resume and your cover letter, and Monster.com provides the Search and Submit features, so you can find the job you want and apply for it — quickly!”

What makes this clever partnership a coup is that Microsoft is a 4 percent owner of CareerBuilder, with whom it also has a traffic deal benefiting the newspaper-owned job board in Europe. This new partnership puts Monster’s job search in front of active jobseekers who, according to the announcement of the deal, last year downloaded “18 million career-related templates.” What that means in people wasn’t specifically detailed, but it is potentially in the millions. (comScore Media Metrix lists Microsoft’s network of sites as third most trafficked in the world in February.)

More, though, than even the job searching, are the resumes Monster can expect from this partnership. The Microsoft career site has a resume upload tool right on its front page and the call to submit a resume is reinforced throughout the channel.

While certainly some of the Office users searching for new resume templates may be seasoned jobseekers polishing up older resumes, a sizable number may be first-timers or those who have been out of the job market so long they don’t have a suitable resume. This means Monster gets to capture a new group of jobseekers.

“This is an innovative and powerful alliance among two global leaders,” said Ted Gilvar, executive vice president and chief global marketing officer, Monster.com.  “The combination of Microsoft Office’s resume-building tools and Monster’s job opportunities and career content will provide job-seekers with tangible help at a time when they really need it.”