25% of managers say they do not consider applicants who make a single typing error on their CV, according to a study conducted by Accountemps, a division of Robert Half.
In the era of tweets and text messages, candidates will have to demonstrate more and more vigilance in writing their curriculum vitae. According to the study conducted by Accountemps, one quarter of 300 Canadian managers surveyed would be willing to eliminate an application from the first typo. 31% would do so at when reaching a second error, 22% a third and 16% a fourth. The results have almost all gone up compared to data collected in 2009 under similar conditions. At that time, 23% of the managers surveyed would dismiss an application at the first error, 28% at the second, 22% at the third and 19% at the fourth.
Significant errors
Allowing a typo in a curriculum vitae can reveal more about the applicant than we might think: that they don’t sufficiently value the importance of details or that they are not very attentive to their work in general. These are behaviours that a company will tend to avoid. Here are some examples of errors that have been made in curriculum vitaes and presentation letters.
• “I have strong kills in accounting”
• “I am familiar with all faucets of programming”
• Tasks: “Filling documents”
• Tasks: “Invoking customers”