How you communicate your skills and accomplishments is key to a successful job search.

OfficeTeam’s website notes:

The adage “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” holds particular weight when it comes to resumes, a recent survey shows. Eighty-four percent of executives polled said it takes just one or two typographical errors in a resume to remove a candidate from consideration for a job opening; 47 percent said a single typo can be the deciding factor.

The survey was developed by OfficeTeam, a leading staffing service specializing in the placement of highly skilled administrative professionals. It was conducted by an independent research firm and includes responses from 150 senior executives at the nation’s 1,000 largest companies.

Executives were asked, “How many typos in a resume does it take for you to decide not to consider a job candidate for a position with your company?” Their responses:

One typo………………………………………………………47%

Two typos …………………………………………………37%

Three typos …………………………………………………7%

Four or more typos ………………………………………6%

Don’t know/no answer……………………………………3%

However, typos are not the only types of errors that pop up in resumes. Take a look at these, from another post about errors in resumes:

“Hope to hear from you, shorty.”
“Have a keen eye for derail.”
“Dear Sir or Madman.”
“I’m attacking my resume for you to review.”
“I am a rabid typist.”
“My work ethics are impeachable.”
“Nervous of steel.”
“Following is a grief overview of my skills.”
“GPA: 34.0”
“Graphic designer seeking no-profit career.”

Don’t assume that your spell check is a good editor! How often are words misspelled only to inadvertently form other words? You don’t want to advertise that you were distinguished as the “best manger of the year.”

Be sure to read through your resume, and have a trusted friend review it as well. You never know when “public” may become indecent, or you’ve used “suing” instead of “using.” The list goes on and on: their/there, and/an, faculty/facility, board/bored...

A tip to consider: create an ”exclusion dictionary” in your Microsoft Office program. This personalized dictionary will flag a word as misspelled (such as manger), even though the main dictionary knows it as a proper word.

Common Errors on Resumes

This article was actually inspired by Rachel Rose's post, an independent multimedia communications professional based in Atlanta. (And, I’m happy to say, a Twitter friend!) Rachel wrote about 42 commonly confused English words – AKA – homophones.

Homophones are defined by dictionary.com as:

Phonetics. a word pronounced the same as another but differing in meaning, whether spelled the same way or not, as heir and air.

While receiving documents addressed to “Dear Sir or Madman” or suggesting that the candidate has a “keen eye for derail” might provide a chuckle, as it is an obvious error, misspelling homophones does not even offer a chuckle. Assuming the reader knows the difference, I think these errors are even more serious, as they indicate that the applicant may not be smarter than a 3rd grader!

My personal pet peeves – and errors I see over and over again:

There – There is going to be a party after the play.

Their – Their children are very well behaved.

They’re – They’re having a lot of trouble on the spelling test.

Incidentally, I personally learned the difference between their and there from a beer commercial. It said something along the lines of it’s the Bud (?) and then inserted ‘ir” for it’s their Bud...Not sure why I remember that...

Your – Your dress is lovely

You’re – You’re going to be sorry if you don’t edit that resume!

Its – The doll lost its shoe.

It’s – It’s going to be a very long day.

Read Rachel’s post (by clicking the link above) and learn what other homophones you should know!

No matter what, avoid these errors in your application materials!