Resume Writing Hints

Perfectly proofed

You're in a hurry to get your resume sent to the perfect job you just found on SalesJobs.com. You haven't even looked at your resume in about a year, but you need to post it ASAP so you can apply for this job. You quickly add your current position to your resume, but that makes it too long so you remove the oldest position and edit the rest by a sentence here, a phrase there….spell-check isn't sending any warnings in red, squiggly lines, so you think ‘looks good' and you post it then apply to your dream job. A few days later, when you have more time, you go back to your resume and realize that you wrote ‘an' instead of ‘and' in a couple places; you wrote ‘sale steam' instead of ‘sales team'; and you removed a few too many words from a sentence that now makes no sense at all… So much for counting on spell-check

Proofreading is something that everyone knows they should do, but nobody gives it as much time and attention as is truly necessary to produce a flawless and cohesive resume. Any recruiter will tell you that approximately 75% of all resumes include either typos or grammatical errors that instantly land the candidate in the ‘No' pile. Proofreading, as any professional editor will tell you, is an art form. It is in your own best interest to take this process seriously, so we have some recommendations on how to approach this task:

• Print it out - Always proof your resume on printed paper. There is something about the tactile nature of reading from paper that helps you see what's really there. Plus, you can catch any formatting or alignment issues that you may not have seen on a monitor screen.
• Find a quiet place - Get away from your desk, computer and phone. Do your best to read it with fresh eyes as though you were reading someone else's resume. Imagine looking for reasons to put this resume in the ‘No' pile.
• One issue in each pass - Go over your resume several times looking for a single issue each time- the first time look for spelling errors, the second time look for wrong words, the third time look for grammatical and syntax errors.
• Read out loud - This will help you hear inconsistencies in tense, person and syntax that you may not pick up on just by reading.
• Take your time - Try reading a single section, take a break, then come back and read the next section; it really helps to look at each piece separately with fresh eyes.
• Pass it on - Ask someone else to have a look at your resume. Since you already know what it's supposed to say, it's very difficult to see it for what it actually says.