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Reminds me of the research I read about a few years ago, conducted in
the UK, I believe. The gist of it was to this effect: The likelihood of
matching the right candidate with the right job via the traditional want
ad-resume-HR system was a few percentage points worse than pure chance
:)
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jim -dot- pinkham=voith -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of Peter Neilson
Sent: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 7:24 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: How do hiring companies view TW resumes?
My resume necessarily contains many arcane terms, some of which are
flagged by MS Word as spelling errors. (Y'all's resumes have the same
feature, of course.) Personally, I use MS Word's spelling correction
magno cum grano salis, but I've just discovered, to my surprise, that
some HR departments might be judging the soundness of a writer's ability
by MS Word's count of misspellings in his resume.
An agent at a placement firm asked me, "There seems to be a spelling
error here, the word 'emergy'. That should be energy, right?" The word
itself is cute, esoteric and unfortunate, but it was indeed the subject
of a thesis that I helped a PhD candidate rewrite.
I had a sinking feeling that my rejection for "perfect" job matches,
getting no interview where it was rather clear to me that I was the most
appropriate candidate, could be from my inability to spell that word
"correctly."
The next version of my resume will omit it.
Does anyone else have evidence that HR people might be so misaligned
with reality as to assume that they can spell technical terms better
than tech writers?
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and Doc-To-Help does the rest. Free trial: http://www.doctohelp.com
Explore CAREER options and paths related to Technical Writing,
learn to create SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS documents, and
get tips on FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION best practices. Free at: http://www.ModernAnalyst.com
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