Don’t Ruin Your Job Prospects by Skipping This Simple Step
I see this every day and it’s painful to think how many job opportunities it has cost.
A deceptively simple but vital tip for everyone, particularly those working on their portfolio site and resume — ALWAYS triple-check your spelling and grammar.
One of the quickest ways to damage your professional credibility is to misspell a word in the very content created to show off your skill and professionalism. To be safe, it’s a good idea to first write everything in a separate tool with a built-in spelling/grammar checker such as Google Docs. Once you’re satisfied that there are no errors, you can copy and paste the text into its publishing destination.
Grammarly is an excellent (and free!) backup checking tool, in case your editor’s built-in spell checker misses anything. Grammarly also works across almost every popular application, including web browsers, allowing it to check the spelling of links and other page elements. If English isn’t your first language, have a friend (or three) help out by proofreading for you.
This high level of proofing should extend to social media posts and emails — especially those sent to a prospective employer. If it comes down to you and one other applicant for a position, and you send an email to the interviewer misspelling their name, chances are you’re not getting the job.
Considering two requirements of at least 90% of jobs are “high level of written communication skills” and “excellent attention to detail”, it’s worth taking a little extra time to ensure you don’t misspell “internet” and ruin your prospects.
I drafted this post in Google Keep (my favourite tool for quickly jotting down ideas on the go). Once I had all my thoughts down, I copied everything from Keep to Google Docs, to clean up the structure and run the spelling and grammar checker over it. I then copied it into Grammarly for a more in-depth grammar check, before finally pasting it into Medium for publishing.
Unfortunately, Medium’s editor on Android is not particularly great — why is there no “select all” function?? Their website also has a habit of getting out of sync/losing drafts; otherwise, I’d use it instead of Google Docs for writing Medium posts.
Make perfection a habit in all of your writing — it’s a habit which will repay you ten-fold. The negative effect of not checking written communication also goes both ways: I’ve had recruiters send me emails that started with “Hi Mark”, suffice to say I did not engage them for their services.
Grammarly is available here as a free online tool and browser extension — the premium options are also well worth the money if you regularly write for work or play.
Disclaimer: I’m not associated with Grammarly in any way, I’m just a fan.
