Mandy had sent out dozens of applications. She was highly skilled and qualified and yet she could hold a bonfire with her rejection letters.
Worse still she only ever heard silence back from the employers she contacted or received automated rejection letters. She was lost, frustrated and losing confidence fast. She didn’t know where to turn.
There is nothing worse than sending application after application off with no response, no feedback, and no help. Yet after reading her resume I could see instantly that there were a number of prominent spelling mistakes and grammar issues in her resume that were letting her down, compromising her image and probably costing her the interview. If only an employer had told her.
The good news for Mandy was this meant there was a simple fix that could potentially solve her job search frustrations.
One of the most common yet unrecognized contributors to a lack of response from employers can be as simple as a missed error or spelling mistake in your application.
According to a 2015 survey on employers’ recruitment experiences by the Australian Department of Employment one of the top five reasons employers listed as to why applicants didn’t make the cut was a poorly presented or written job application.
I mess up and make mistakes all the time. The reality is we are all human and errors are a part of life. When it comes to your resume, the trick is catching these before others do.
No one is perfect and we all make mistakes but sadly these simple slip-ups can cost you dearly when it comes to winning the interview. To avoid this risk, here are some easy proofing processes for your application that you can use:
- Spell check and grammar check your application using the computer.
- Personally read your application from cover to cover in a quiet place to identify any missed problems, poor word choices or sentence structure issues.
- Re-read your application backwards. This can sometimes enable you to pick up errors that your eye may have missed the first time you read the document.
- Select your most analytical, detail-driven friend and ask them to read it. (You know the one – the person who picks up spelling errors in the menus at restaurants when you dine with them).
- Check and double check that the details of the recipient, company and job title are correct in your cover letter. Nothing makes a worse impression than errors in these areas. It immediately tells the reader they are just one of many in a bulk mail out.
- Make sure to look out for people’s pet hates when it comes to word confusion: their, there and they’re; stationery and stationary; to, two and too; personnel and personal; role and roll.
- Take a break before you email it and come back and proof it one last time after your eyes are refreshed.
My final words of advice are if you do mess up, learn from it, fix it, and try not to beat up on yourself too much. It’s not life or death or brain surgery after all.
