Typos on your résumé … kiss of death or a harmless goof?
If you go by what a few CA Inc. execs told C.W. Post students yesterday, it’s one of the biggest mistakes you can make, as it can ruin first impressions. Here’s the blurb from the Brookville-based college:
First impressions are important to prospective employers – and a good first impression starts with a sharp-looking suit and a typo-free résumé, executives of Long Island-based global IT management software company CA told business students in a roundtable discussion at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University on Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2008.
But Penelope Trunk, who writes the blog The Brazen Careerist, said she’s sick of hearing that kind of advice. Her view is: If you have to be told not to present a prospective employer with a typo-laden résumé, you’re not even employable.
However, Trunk argues that we’re human, after all, and we make mistakes.
What’s your take, employers, appliers, recruiters, etc.?
From her post:
It is near impossible to not have a typo in a resume at some point because we’ve all read our resume five hundred times, and it’s ineffective to proofread something you’ve reread so much. On top of that, job hunting is often a repetitive, boring task, so it’s no surprise that people copy and paste and put the wrong employer name in the salutation all the time.
So there’s nothing you can do to fix a typo if the resume is sent. You look bad resending a resume to a hiring manager and saying “I had a typo in my resume.” Most likely the person won’t notice the typo anyway unless it is in his name. Even if you are applying for a proofreader job, it’s not going to help to resend the resume. The job of a proofreader is to catch the error before he hits send.
A lot of polls say recruiters will dump a resume in the garbage if there’s one typo. I don’t believe it. First, all typos are not equal. But also, a sales person with a typo is different than a technical writer with a typo. While a technical writer should be detail-oriented, the skills that make a good sales person don’t necessarily make a good proofreader.
So if you send a resume with a typo, hope the recruiter doesn’t notice, and try not to do it again. Move on.
Honest to God true story: I was promoted at the company where I was and had 500 business cards made up with my new title (but one unfortuante typo): Vice President for Pubic Relations.
Chef Executive and Chief Executive are each prestigious positions but mean drastically different things but I feel one of the most unforgiveable typo concerns a company that one has listed on a resume. Examples of such offenses include Salon Associates when the actual company was Sloane, and Goldman Saks when it’s supposed to be Goldman Sachs.
Gee…you drew a paycheck from these folks for a considerable about of time, think you could’ve learned the proper spelling of the firm that employed you?