Heads up, recruiters: Two in five candidates are only guessing the spelling of big words on their resume
Talk about being “professional”. Nearly one in five people misspell that word in their resume.
Never mind the spell-check function on Microsoft Word: these candidates will submit their CV to the hiring manager, errors and all.
While that clearly seems unprofessional, it still doesn’t beat one in four candidates who – ironically – botch the word “perfectionist” when describing themselves in their CV. Variations of the word include “perfactionist” and “perfectonist”.
READ MORE: These CV mistakes are costing candidates their dream jobs
The specialists at Resume.io, a platform that helps job applicants polish up their CVs, examined 2,000 of these documents and polled more than 1,200 people about their resume-writing tactics.
Two in five respondents said they resort to guessing the spelling of big words on their CV (41%), while some also misspell the name of their own boss.
10 most commonly misspelled words in CVs
|
Initiative |
32% |
|
Detail-orientated |
29% |
|
Perfectionist |
25% |
|
Management |
21% |
|
Professional |
17% |
|
Implemented |
14% |
|
Corresponding |
14% |
|
Achieved |
9% |
|
Accurate |
7% |
|
Succeeded |
5% |
All this despite the fact that the majority of hiring managers (73%) are generally put off when they see multiple spelling mistakes. This makes them less likely to invite the applicant for an interview. Of those who may have already ruined their chances, about one in four (23%) blame it on their CV.
READ MORE: 10 biggest interview mistakes
Of course, there are nifty tools to help candidates along. For those who want to sound erudite in their word choice but aren’t quite sure which words to go for, a quick press on Shift + F7 will launch Word’s built-in thesaurus.
But you’ve been warned: using big words in documents, which should otherwise reflect clear and simple writing, might work to your disadvantage.
A study from Princeton University showed people who use simpler language are perceived as being more intelligent than the seemingly perspicacious sesquipedalianists who manufacture polysyllabic nominalisations to discombobulate people.
So, enough with those big words that make you sound less profffessional every time you botch a consonant cluster here and there – and go for simpler, shorter and more concrete words instead.
