Well, I just submitted what I consider to be a fairly impressive resume, except for one problem. Upon review, after I submitted the damn thing, I realized that I had place the wrong date at the top of the resume! I put “January 17” as opposed to what should be the “11th”.
Unless he’s impressed by receiving a resume me from a future, how big of a mistake is this?
Argh, I knew I should have double checked that darn date.
Upon review, I really should have re-read that post as well.
Also, instead of “Resume”, I meant “Cover Letter.” Despite this, I can assure you that the date was the only error in the Cover Letter/Resume 
Back when I was doing HR, I wouldn’t have made an issue about it. It totally depends on what you’re applying for. I hope it’s not proofreading. 
I wouldn’t even notice. And if I did, I wouldn’t think it was any deal at all.
Doubt very much that the mistake would be noticed. Even if noticed it wouldn’t be in any way a primary reason for the trip to the round filing cabinet. Though if there were several other typos it might add up to a reason. The worst effect would be from a very anal boss or a nerdy one. The nerd might just make a joke about time travelling in the first interview, the anal boss you don’t really want to work for any way.
Phew, thanks guys. Even though the odds of me getting the position is a long shot, it’s reassuring to know that I likely won’t be doomed from the outset.
i would consider you a culturally insensitive person for working/writing your cover letter on mlk day. then i would hire you, because if that’s the worst thing you did, and you owned up to it, you’re ok.
I sent a resume that had the wrong phone number on it - I’d transposed two of the numbers and didn’t double check. They wanted me badly enough that my boss sent me an e-mail. At the interview, I profusely apologied and pointed out my error, and made sure he had the correct phone number.
Felt like a major grade idiot, but I got the job anyway. I’d say that your error was more minor than that, so I’d say no harm no foul. Likely they won’t even see the date anyway.
So minor that it’s not worth worrying about. I catch mistakes like this in CVs all the time and it only bothers me if a spell checker should catch it.
Ugh, turns out it’s just [hopefully] slightly worse than I thought.
While writing an essay for school, I noticed I had written down the year as “2004”, which is a mistake I make every damn year for about three months. So sure enough, I looked at my Cover Letter and realized I had made the same mistake as well. So the date reads “January 17, 2004.” Now my cover letter is from the past!
I should have been a writer for Back to the Future
Here, I’ll make you feel better.
When I was first trying to get freelance copyediting work, I did a mailing of about 40 cover letters and resumes to targeted potential clients. I made up a form letter with merge fields, which I merged with my (I thought) carefully vetted data file of names and addresses to create the mailing.
After they had been sent, I found that in one of the letters I had spelled the receipient’s name differently in the address block and in the salutation! Worse, it was the dreaded ie/ei transposition, which I am forever correcting other people for making IN MY OWN NAME!!
I was mortified. Needless to say, I never heard from that person.
Here’s another one. Mr. S almost, ALMOST sent a cover letter with a job application telling the recipient how much he enjoyed sampling microbrew beers. The intended recipient was a machine shop. The PREVIOUS recipient, whose stored letter on his computer he had used as a template, was (you guessed it) a microbrewery.
Luckily he caught it before he sent it out (although he didn’t get either job). But we laughed at what the machine shop supervisor’s reaction might have been.
Nearly all resume mistakes are death.
This, however, is an exception. Don’t worry about it.
It’s not nearly as egregious as the error I made recently in a cover letter, where I was applying for a project management position. I meant to say “provided operational oversight for…” and instead said “provided operational for…”
Yeah, hire this guy to run things; he can’t even provide oversight for his cover letter…
If anyone asks just tell them time travel is one of your many incredible skills, that would be an spectacular asset to their company.
If it makes you feel any better I sent out resumes with my name spelt wrong :smack: Didn’t hurt my job search, I brought it up myself in subsequent interviews.
In general, most readers won’t notice, at least not on first glance. If the competition for an interview is fierce, however, such a mistake could cost you the opportunity. I worked at a company where 300 of 400 resumes were tossed because of typos or other such errors. I also co-wrote a business communication text, so I can tell you that little details often end up being a deciding factor, especially in a poor economy.
I used to work for a headhunter and it was part of my job to screen applicants before my boss even looked at them based on resumes. I barely looked at cover letters, honestly. I’d read them over for egregious errors, interesting bits, etc., but the resume is what I really scrutinized. As for that date, this is exactly what I’d think: that you had a form letter that you used for the cover letter, and you forgot to change the date or something. No big deal, though I bet it would make me chuckle for a second. It would NOT stop me from putting you in the good pile if everything else was OK.
I don’t imagine it will hurt too much, unless you have made a big deal about your attention to detail. I would probably not have noticed it.
reported
Wish I’d seen this first time round. I could have mentioned the guy that, in talking about accuracy, rendered “attention to detail” as “attantion of details.” Three words, three errors.