CV mistakes are almost as common as the CV itself.
We’ve put together a list of words that are misspelled on CVs all the time. Each of these are simple mistakes that are easy to make but also easy to correct. Rightly or wrongly, they immediately create a negative picture of the candidate and push them down the list.
Your job
Believe it or not, people regularly misspell their job title. From Engineer spelled with two ‘e’s to Accountant spelled with one ‘c’; it’s a bad start when you essentially tell a potential employer that you can’t spell your own job. This might be passed off as a typo if it only happened once, but we’ve seen CVs with 3 or 4 instances of the same mistake. This looks even worse in an era when even text messages can be spellchecked. Even if it is an honest mistake, it’s very difficult for employers to invest in a new enginer.
Your employer
Second to job title in the ‘mistakes we should never make but often do’ stakes is your current employer. If you don’t care enough about the company that you currently work for to spell their name correctly on your CV, what message does that send to potential employers? Since correctly-spelled company names will often be marked as wrong by your spellcheck it’s important to both spellcheck and proofread every word on your CV, even the ones that you expect to be ‘wrong’.
Liase (Liaise)
‘Liaise’ is one of those difficult words that looks misspelled when it’s spelled correctly. It’s also a word that isn’t absolutely necessary. ‘Liaise’ is often used as a dressed up version of ‘speak’, ‘communicate’ or ‘work with’. It’s a trap we often fall into on CVs; ‘spoke to customers’ becomes ‘engaged effectively with clients’, ‘worked with other departments’ becomes ‘liaised with various business functions’. It’s a practice that most employers and recruiters will see right through; especially if you misspell the word you’re using to dress up your writing.
Manger (Manager) & Collage (College)
We’ve put these two together because they both fall into the category of mistakes that are ‘spellcheck’s fault’. Spellcheck can’t tell the difference between a place of learning and a collection of pictures or a business leader and a farmyard trough with religious significance. All it knows is that ‘manger’, ‘manager’, ‘collage’ and ‘college’ are all English words. You know it too, but you also know which word you meant to type. The lesson is simple, don’t trust spellcheck to be your only proof-reader and you’ll never have to blame it for filling your CV with mistakes.
These may seem relatively small mistakes that are easy to correct but they will affect how an employer sees you. The only way to avoid that is to make sure your spelling is correct, before you send the CV.