Typos on Resumes

[Small_British_Shop_Owner]

@alice_in_wonderland

A resume and a curriculum vitae are totally different documents. Submitting a CV for anything other than an academic position or one that involves research related activities would be absurd.

Not in this country dear

[Foxy40]

@labtrash

I’ve actually received resumes that were:

-Written in pencil on yellow legal paper.

-From the “manger” of McDonalds.

-That listed graduating 6th grade as an acheivement.

Perhaps it was a major acheivement for him! Did he also mention that he was able to color within the lines?

Back to my original post, I have received less than 20 resumes which isn’t a lot to choose from. I arranged an interview with Mr Typo to see if he is as disorganized and careless in person as he appears to be on paper. I like the highlighting idea posted above. May give that a try

[alice_in_wonderland]

@Small British Shop Owner

Not in this country dear

Well the UK profs that I work with disagree with you, but OK.

[groo]

I can overlook one or two typos (in my engineering field). One resume that included “inventor” (emphasis his) got tossed as soon as we stopped laughing. Had he actually listed an invention or two, our reaction might have been different.

[winewhore]

@gigi

One of my friends got her job with our organization when our boss was intrigued by her interests, which read “reading, writing, recycling”. Or maybe even “readin’, writin’, recyclin’.”

Likewise, one of the reasons I hold my current (non-electronic-related) position is because my resume included the following as a previous job duty: “Repaired and maintained electronic equipment such as radios, receivers, computers, and the occasional coffeepot”

[sturmhauke]

@NardoPolo

Getting back to the second question from the original post: During the interview, I hand the cover letter and resume back to the applicant with the errors highlighted. I review each one. Then I ask the obvious question: Why should we be interested in hiring someone that presents this as some of their finest work? :eek:

Why would you waste your own time and theirs by conducting an interview when you have no intention of hiring them?

[DrDeth]

@storyteller0910

. So, all told, every document we produce is reviewed by more than ten people, including people with PhDs and 20 years copyediting experience.

And every once in a blue moon, we will still finalize a document with a minor typo in it. If an error can once in a while slip past not only me, but nine other reviewers, than I can hardly hold the job applicant to a different standard. Unless you, yourself, have literally never made a single error in a professional environment, and feel comfortable expecting that sort of perfection from every other employee, summarily dismissing a candidate for a single typo on his or her resume is lazy and ultimately foolish.

QFT. Really, one tiny typo? You know if there is such a thing as karma, all those here who claim they’d reject a resume with any typo at all will have *their *resumes rejected for such a tiny typo.
:mad:

[Gala_Matrix_Fire]

I’ve heard stories of employers rejecting candidates because the watermark on the resume paper was upside-down, i.e. not facing the same way as the printing.

I guess that’s one way to randomly winnow 1,000 applicants down, but it seems like an incredibly stupid way to judge whether or not someone would be a desirable employee.

Thank goodness it’s all becoming electronic.

[Beware_of_Doug]

@Phlosphr

Simplest answer to the OP: If person A and person B are the only applicants for a really cool job and they have the exact same qualifications and experience but person A had a spelling error.

Person B get’s the job.

How about if person A had a spelling error and person B had a dangling dependent clause and misused an apostrophe? :dubious:

And storyteller, people who are into that level of pettiness will never think they’re being lazy. They feel pretty damn righteous about it, if they feel anything at all.

[gigi]

@NardoPolo

Getting back to the second question from the original post: During the interview, I hand the cover letter and resume back to the applicant with the errors highlighted. I review each one. Then I ask the obvious question: Why should we be interested in hiring someone that presents this as some of their finest work? :eek:

Cruel, perhaps. But sincere.

Plus it lets the interviewee know that you’re not someone they would want to work for.

[initech]

Taking a new job is a transaction, not a gift from the employer. Some people add a minor typo or two (“Experiience”) to filter out the control freaks.

That said, I toss most typos and spelling errors. Getting your resume right is an exceedingly low standard to meet, and I think it’s reasonable to eliminate candidates who can’t handle it.

[CairoCarol]

originally posted by panache45:

Back when I was hiring, I was amazed at how many applicants for proofreader had typos in their resumes. Yeah, I was ruthless.

Tee-hee. I used to run the copyediting department for a magazine publisher. Oh, how we would HOWL over the resumes people sent with statements like “I am a native-speaker English.” Oh, really?

On the other hand, I would be much less ruthless for a job where letting small typos slip by would not be the end of the world; if the applicant was young (and presumably applying for an entry-level position); or if the typo was a minor defect in an otherwise well-presented set of promising credentials.

Typos are simply IMPOSSIBLE to weed out entirely. Heck, I’ve even seen typos in The New Yorker and The Economist – two publications with impeccable attention to accuracy. In the old days, where you had one resume that you sent out to be professionally printed, a typo would have been a very bad sign. But now? Everyone is supposed to use modern word-processing technology to tailor and individualize their resume for each job. That being the case, it is a lot more understandable if a typo slips in.