It goes without saying that you should always proofread important documents. And what document is more important in your career search than your resume? Yet, unfortunately, we see resumes submitted to us or on job boards that are riddled with basic errors that could have easily been caught if only good proofreading had been done. Don’t let this be you! If a company wants to hire a person who has great attention to detail skills, they will almost certainly ignore resumes that have simple mistakes. Here are six recommendations for better proofreading.
- Rule number 1: Don’t trust yourself. Enlist the help of someone else because a second set of eyes provides a fresh perspective.
- Print your resume. There’s something about working with a hard copy that helps you uncover items that you may have overlooked when reviewing it on the computer screen.
- Have a pen or pencil in your hand as your proofread and use it to follow along with the words. Doing so will help focus your attention.
- Go slowly. Rushing will cause you to overlook things. A good way to force yourself to go slowly is to read your resume out loud as you go.
- Make use of the grammar and spell-check tools that are integrated into Microsoft Word. You can also make use of a great online resource called Grammarly. The free version of the Grammarly app is quite effective. It can be integrated into multiple platforms like MS Word, Google Docs, and Gmail. We have found that it catches mistakes that are overlooked by MS Word. The premium version of Grammarly has some nice additional features but is a bit pricey.
- One of the more interesting approaches to proofreading is to read your resume from bottom to top. We once had an Alliance staff member who was amazing at finding mistakes on resumes that others had overlooked. He credited his effectiveness to this bottom-up approach.
By the way. We inserted a small typographical error in this post. Can you find it?