How to avoid mistakes on your resume -

How to avoid mistakes on your resume - Todays post is one of many from members of the Career Collective community I co-coordinate with my colleague Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter. I encourage you to visit other members responses, which will be linked at the end of my post tomorrow. Please follow our hashtag on Twitter: #careercollective. This months question (in a nod to Halloween this weekend): How to avoid scary career/resume mistakes? How should job seekers ensure their resume/career costume fits / attracts the right target audience? Both questions are so important! Ive been working on several webinars, and have been thinking a lot about targeted search and how to be sure your materials are perfectly suited to your goals. (This is more important than you might realize for a successful search.) But, since that is the topic of my presentation for the Career Summit, Im going to hold off on those tips. You can still register for the Summit (and listen to anything you missed via the archives). I present on November 17th.   Learn more in THIS post about how the Career Summit is for you if you are looking for a job). How to avoid scary resume mistakes? Have you ever written an important document and sent it off, only to find that you included a silly error? Like, Im looking forward too meeting you or Its nice the the market is recovering. (Can you find the errors in those sentences?) Your resume is as important a document as any, and the list of potential errors long. I recently spoke with several hiring managers when I attended the Society for Human Resource Management-Atlantas conference, and each said that an error on a resume indicates a careless prospective employee. It may seem harsh, but when there are so many applicants for each job, weeding out candidates whose resumes dont seem detail oriented is one way to screen them. Are you relying on your spell check to catch your errors? You may want to think twice! How often are words misspelled only to inadvertently form other words? You dont want to advertise that you were distinguished as the best manger of the year. I headed up the career center at Emory Universitys Rollins School of Public Health. You can only imagine how many of my students were touting their credentials as something slightly indecent! (Think public without the all important L!) A tip to consider: create an exclusion dictionary in yourMicrosoft Office program. This personalized dictionary will flag a word as misspelled (such as manger), even though the main dictionary knows it as a proper word. Thanks to Lindsay Olson, who blogs about recruiting and PR, for sharing this fun video that she saw on Rowan Manahans blog, Fortify Your Oasis. The video offers an exaggerated example of why you cant assume that your spell check is a good editor! Be sure to read through your resume, and have a trusted friend review it as well. (Or a professional!) You never know when public may become indecent.   The list goes on and on: their/there, and/an, faculty/facility, board/bored. In the meantime, take a look at this video for a good laugh! Be sure to visit my colleagues posts on the subject: Where Are the Wild Things, Anyway?, @WorkWithIllness Is Your Job Search Making You Feel Like a Smashed Pumpkin?, @DebraWheatman Hiding in Plain Sight, @WalterAkana, Dont make these frightful resume mistakes, @LaurieBerenson How Not to Be a Spooky Job Seeker, @heathermundell A Tombstone Resume:Eulogizing Your Experience, @GayleHoward The Top Ten Scary Things Job Seekers Do, @barbarasafani Oh, Job Search Isnt Like Trick or Treating?, @careersherpa A Most Unfortunate Resume Mistake No One Will Tell You, @chandlee Oh no. Not the phone!, @DawnBugni Halloween Caution: Job Seeker Horror, @resumeservice Boo! Are you scaring away opportunities or the competition? @MartinBuckland @EliteResumes Your Career Brand: A Scary Trick or an Appealing Treat?, @KCCareerCoach How to avoid mistakes on your resume, @Keppie_Careers Sc-sc-scary Resume Mistakes, @erinkennedycprw A Flawed Resume is a Scary Prospect, @KatCareerGal Job Search Angst: Like Clouds Mounting Before a Storm, @ValueIntoWords Does Your Career Costume Fit You?, @expatcoachmegan Photo by PumpkinWayne