In the employment world, we see some of the best and a lot of the worst examples of resumes around. People seem to think near enough is good enough, so don’t bother to spell check or sentence check their work. They don’t seem to mind telling the entire world their personal circumstances – and fail repeatedly to give the prospective employer the information they need. Can you do this job? Then prove it. And the only way we can do that is through the words that we use.

As I have said many times, if you cannot sell yourself on paper, you will never do it in person

Courier Mail Mobile/PDA EDITION

Making a bad job of it
Kay Dibben | January 24, 2009

POOR spelling and grammar, verbose resumes and applications that include too many personal details are killing the chance of job seekers finding work.

Recruiters and those who help applicants prepare CVs and resumes say they are astounded by some of the obvious mistakes that job applicants make.

“The world of texting and emails has lowered people’s standards of English,” Jeanette Hannan of Brisbane firm Resumes for Results said. “I receive emails with text message jargon. I straight away dismiss them.”

Some applicants put too many details about their private lives, and wrote resumes that were 20 to 30 pages long.

“They will put in that they are married, how many children they have, even the dog’s name,” Ms Hannan said.

One woman even detailed her husband’s and father’s job qualifications.

Ms Hannan said job seekers often failed to sell their achievements, such as boosting sales achieved in a previous job.

Kevin Alexander, practice leader with recruitment firm Hudson, said many people forgot the importance of the resume document.

“It is the document that the candidate will be initially judged against, and therefore it is vital to get right,” he said.

While candidates could get away with a few lapses in their resume in the past, as the job market intensified this year employers would look for those who stood out, Mr Alexander said.

Many people with great resumes fell at the interview hurdle and job applicants needed to be prepared for several interviews, he said.

Recruiter Glenda Stenner said the internet had made it too easy for people to apply for jobs, and as a result some applied for too many positions, including those for which they were not qualified.

She has seen bad spelling mistakes, particularly in resumes of people applying for administrative positions.

Ms Stenner said employers and recruiters were being inundated with applications, and resumes and cover letters needed to have enough impact to get the job seeker on to the shortlist.

“It should be just the facts,” Ms Stenner said.

One employer said he sometimes had to scroll down five pages of information before he found out where an applicant had worked.

Ms Stenner said some applicants failed to tailor cover letters to the position, and were sending the same cover letter over and over, with the same mistakes.

Deborah Barit of Impressive Interviews said many applicants did not explain what they did and tried to give employers too much information they were not interested in.