Your resume and other application materials must must must be free of errors. I cannot stress this enough. Even if a search committee is told to ignore errors and give you the benefit of the doubt it is very difficult for people to actually do so. Many times people will refer to a candidate by the errors on their materials “you know, the one who put San Diego State instead of San Francisco State”. Recently a candidate applied for an RD position with us and accidentally left "Graduate Assistant Hall Director" on their cover letter (it was a full time RD job they were applying for). I can't tell you how many times people have allowed spell checker to auto-correct words and turn them into something else entirely. Or clearly were typing too fast and didn't realize they added or left out letters in words, forgot a space, or put punctuation in the wrong spot. Employers might have reviewed hundreds of resumes in our time, we become amateur editors and our eyes catch pretty much everything, and we remember the doozies in particular. You get the idea, and you don’t want that to be you.
Check names so you are positive they are spelled correctly, I've been called the wrong gender, given a title I don't have (Professor, Director, Dean), and my name is a common one with several variations of spelling but I like my way so please do make sure you give me the decency to care and spell it correctly. I am slightly impressed by those who do, and find a small hesitation for those who don't. It's my name, and if you can't take the time to spell my name correctly will you work hard to spell the names of your international students or those students not named John, Jane, Beth or Bob correctly? I can either hope so or you can just show me so by getting them correct from the start. Granted, everyone doesn't always get names correct, but if my name is on the position posting and on my business card and even on my email- I do expect you can get it right and I'll do you the same courtesy.
Be sure the institution name is correct, and for goodness sake check the title of the position- Residence Hall Director and Resident Director are not the same thing in the mind of the employer! Position titles are an important enough thing and are one more indicator that you are able to attend to detail. Apply to enough jobs and you stop caring so much about those details, I get that, but we have to care and need to know that in the end you do too. It's simple enough- save each resume and cover letter for each position you apply to in it's own folder on your personal computer (not work computer!) with the correct institution and position title as the name of the document: "Name-institution-coverletter.doc". Then when you have a friend edit it, have them double check you have it correct.
Be sure your own name is spelled correctly (yes, seriously!), you have your personal email and not your current work email, and that the title of your degree is written correctly. I honestly had a candidate recently who had to explain to me that they were really sorry but had apparently mistyped their own name and then didn't bother to correct us when we called them by the wrong name during their entire on-campus interview day. At the end of the day they finally told me, and provided me with a corrected resume that they had "meant" to send me the week before. We were trying to be respectful of the unusual name, they didn't have the courage to let us know it was wrong. We felt like fools- not exactly an optimal way to join a department.
Do not, and I say it again, do NOT provide your current work email as a contact for your candidacy. Work email is not appropriate, nor is it confidential. On the other hand please do NOT provide me with your cute but inappropriate personal email. DO however set one up just for your job search. Gmail, yahoo, hotmail- all free. Sign up for one that is your.full.name@gmail.com, or something similar. I can't share real examples here without permission of the actual candidates but suffice it to say that words like "hottie", "partier" and "bitch" have made their way into my inbox and helped those candidates make their way into the "no" pile. You may be asking no way, really?! Yes, really.
Do be sure your degree, alma mater, and current place of employment are all spelled correctly. Once again, not kidding. Seems simple yet people get it wrong all the time. I know enough that The Ohio State University is big on the "The"- if you claim to have gone there I'm expecting to see the "The", if I don't see it I begin to question and as I have said before- do NOT make an employer question and do not create more work for us. Sometimes it's spell-check that does it to you, sometimes it's haste but either way a triple edit-check should catch nearly everything.
That brings me to editing. As I mentioned in the title of this post- check your documents before you even THINK about submitting them, double-check once you've got a job in mind, triple check after putting it aside for a few days and coming back to it and finally have at least one (if not several) friends colleagues or mentors look at your application materials for errors. Most of the time candidates have people edit content and formatting and yes you should do that as well AND then have different people edit for errors. The more often the same eyes look at your letter and resume the more likely they are to miss things that need editing. Fresh eyes catch more things and if you ask someone to check for editing they are more likely to say yes because it's often quicker than focusing on content and formatting.
Enough about editing, next time I'll discuss cover letter and resume formatting tips and traps.
Please be my mentor! My entire Student Affairs cohort thoroughly enjoys your blog. Thank you!
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