You know you have to proofread your resume. What is the best way? In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses the best way to proofread your resume.
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I want to give you some advice about proofreading your resume. Everyone thinks their resume has no spelling or grammar mistakes, no punctuation errors, no misused words. I know that’s true because they would be sending their resume to me if they believe they had any of these mistakes in them.
But I read so many resumes that have mistakes in them – – words that are incorrectly used like “there” and “their.” I know some people can catch the difference but sometimes software jumps the word or letter and no one notices and he gets through.
Here’s my advice for proofreading; I know it’s a lot of quirky but I know it is effective.
I want you to read your resume from the end to the beginning. Start with the last sentence. We did. Is it correct. Is it correct grammatically correct. Is the spelling correct. Good. Go to the next sentence above.
Start of the end and work your way up to the beginning.
I suggest this for a few reasons. The first is that is the exact opposite of what you would expect to you will see things that you wouldn’t otherwise notice. You’ll see things freshly, instead of in the way that was constructed.
Habit says that we tend to skim when we see things in a familiar way. This is not a familiar way of doing things.
The third reason is because I see more errors at the end of the resume that I do at the beginning. It seems that the later you get into the job history, the more likely it is that you make a mistake because you start rushing a bit.
So, start at the end and work your way out. Last sentence to first sentence, look at every sentence of your resume. Make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors. Make sure there are no misused terms. Look for specific words that might be in your resume that, if misspelled would also be correct.
Let me give you an example using old technology. Often, the term, “Novell” (that’s an IT term) would be misspelled as “novel.” Maybe someone’s keyboard stuck and only one L came out. Whatever the reason was, that was a common misspelling. Spellchecking software wouldn’t recognize it because the word “novel”is a correctly spelt word.
Look for terms like that they might exist in your resume, that if misspelled, might get through the spellchecker (for you accountants, think of the word gap and GAAP).
If you follow this advice your resume won’t have those dumb errors that cause people like me and hiring managers to go, “Huh? What was she thinking?” Or, “what was he thinking?”
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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.
