Word’s search feature can help you improve your resume by searching for the most common mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. This check is a vital step in making sure your resume is error-free. In response to a CareerBuilder survey, 58% of hiring managers and recruiters refused to read a resume with typos, immediately dismissing those candidates from any consideration for the job.
The following 10 easy searches will help track down typos on your resume.
- Search for “lead”—if the job is in the past, the word you want is “led.”
- Search for double spaces. After a period, you only need a single space.
- Search for a period outside the quotes (”.) In U.S. English, the period normally goes inside the quotes (.”).
- Search for the dollar sign ($). Make sure you are always referring to dollars the same way, preferably either million or M and either billion or B. If you use $200K in one place, do not use $200,000 in another place. Writing “$2,000 dollars” is wrong because the $ is all you need.
- Search for “company.” Word has a bad habit of wanting you to capitalize company any time it follows a noun (for example, “this insurance company…”). Company should only be capitalized if it is at the start of a sentence or part of a company name (BBB Insurance Company).
- Search for % and percent. Both are correct but choose one.
- Search for a hyphen after the letter e (as in e-commerce and e-mail). These days, the hyphen is rarely required. The preferred spellings are ecommerce and email.
- Search for United States, US, USA, and U.S. Again, any one of these is correct but be consistent in using one.
- Search for any punctuation mark that comes in a set. For example, you always need two quotation marks (“ ”), and you always need two parentheses ( ).
- Search for question marks (?). Normally, they should not appear in a resume.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the many roles you have to play in creating a resume: marketing guru, expert writer, and master finder of typos on your resume? Contact Robin’s Resumes® for some much-needed help.
