Does Your Resume Suck? Typoes, Homophones and Inexcusable Errors Two Avoid
As a recruiter, I’m looking at resumes all day. The simple mistakes people make are simply amazing to me. Spellcheck won’t help you find all the errors … trust me! Some errors, I will excuse and call the candidate so they can fix them. But typos and grammatical errors get the resume put in the trash. Here are some errors that are inexcusable:
1. Homophones. These are words that sound the same but have different meanings — too/to/two. Spellcheck won’t find these, so be careful. Some others are: Your/you’re, there/their/they’re, it’s/its, whose/who’s, every day and everyday.
2. Apostrophes. Apostrophes do not indicate the plural form of a singular noun!
3. Affect vs. effect. Affect is a verb; effect is a noun.
4. That/which. That is used in essential clauses — clauses that do not have commas around them. If the clause has commas, use which.
5. Prepositions. Never end a sentence with a preposition. Some may disagree with me, but as far as resumes go, don’t do it!
When you are reading resumes, you are sorting “out” the bad ones. Don’t wind up in the out box because of a stupid, easy-to-fix, mistake. I didn’t forget the dreaded dangling participle … but will save this for a posting on cover letters.
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Published: July 1, 2012 By:
