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Will an Error on Your Resume Cost You the Job? Maybe.

Job applicants often look for positions in highly competitive industries. In many cases, a single job ad will have dozens or even hundreds of applicants. Recruiters examine the smallest of details to determine who’s the best fit. One mistake that greatly hurts your chances and can potentially cost you the job is making mistakes on your resume.

The Full Impact

While some applicants may not view something like a minor spelling error as being a deal breaker, it can have a major impact. “Spelling mistakes can hurt your chances even if you’re applying for a low-skill job or one in which you won’t be doing much actual writing,” explains financial writer Martha C. White in Time MONEY. “Hiring managers believe it reflects poorly on an applicant’s professionalism, diligence and even intelligence.”

So if it comes down to two candidates and one has a perfect, blemish-free resume, and the other has blatant errors, you can pretty much guarantee the former will get the job.

Going Beyond Spellcheck

Most applicants use some sort of spellchecker these days, and for good reason. It helps catch most issues and will automatically alert you anytime something is amiss. But it’s certainly not perfect, and you can’t always expect spellcheck to catch 100 percent of resume errors. For instance, it wouldn’t notify you if you mistakenly used “higher” rather than “hire.”

To ensure your resume is mistake free, it’s necessary to thoroughly proofread it—ideally out loud because this makes you more likely to catch the smaller blemishes. Another technique is to read through your resume backwards. This forces you to slow down and really analyze every section meaning you should catch more mistakes. Even better, have a friend look it over so they can identify any mistakes that you might have missed.

Most hiring managers have little patience for resume errors. Failing to catch even small ones can really hurt your chances and maybe cost you a job opportunity. Being meticulous and putting forth the effort to pour over your resume word by word along with enlisting the help of a friend should help you iron out the kinks so your resume is completely error-free.

Need a little help with your job search? Contact Axiom Staffing Group today.

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