Disclaimer up front: as a serial and life-long reader and writer, I tend to focus on writing quality more than the average hiring authority, business partner, customer, colleague, friend or relative. However, I do not believe that I'm in the minority of potential decision-makers. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I do not claim to be a perfect writer or editor, with my solid
B in my college
Grammar 101 course. However, please do read on before you hit the
send button on your next job application.
Bottom line: I continue to consistently see unprofessional correspondence from job candidates. Cover emails and letters as well as job applications riddled with spelling and grammatical errors.
The C.V. attachment that arrived with nothing but "Sent from My Verizon Wireless Blackberry" in the body of the email with the word "sex" embedded in the job applicant's email address is the most recent
and memorable.
Twice recently I have seen the mangled "oppertunity" (
sic). Once in the email subject line. Ouch.
The immediacy of error-ridden electronic job applications is perhaps even more heart-breaking than the old-fashioned hard-copy cover letters and C.V.'s sent to prospective employers via snail mail. That fading process at least, in theory, baked in some more time to review and proof your correspondence before you stamped it and dropped it in the mailbox (the red, white and blue metal ones). As a recruiter, just for the record, I do not miss
at all managing hard-copy job applications.
When a job candidate (or for that matter, anyone else who is writing with the intention of marketing a product) corresponds as carelessly as exemplified above, the telegraphed impact about you as a candidate on the hiring authority and / or decision-maker is deafening:
- No attention to detail, does not proof their work
- Makes frequent mistakes
- Cannot write, perhaps cannot speak professionally
- Poor judgment
- Might have been impaired when they sent their email application.
(Friends don't let friends email; text; dial; drunk.)
- (Insert your own assessment here.)
The 90-day performance review rated "unsatisfactory" writes itself in my head as I move the candidate's mangled application to the "regret" folder, as my experience in the dual role of inside Executive Recruiter and Director of Human Resources / Employee Relations guides me to manage the unsatisfactory performance in the hiring stage and not pursue such candidates any further.
Managing poor performance on the front end (e.g., the candidate hiring stage) saves me and my organization a great deal of work and money on the back end (Payroll time wasted training, disciplining and making available to industry a substandard performer.)
In other words, I had to clean up my own mess, HR-wise, if I inserted a candidate with the issues above into the hiring process and they were subsequently hired. Not to mention the poor reflection on my assessment skills. It certainly motivates the drive for quality candidates.
There is so much information out in both the media and social media channels about the importance of accurate business writing in both the job application process and in the workplace, I'm once again at a loss to understand the substandard writing and grammatical errors I continue to experience in the work of others, especially in this competitive economy.
And I'm not advocating that candidates with poor writing skills engage ghost writers to win the job. Because once you win the job, you still need to write at least emails. I had a manager who worked for me whose emails were borderline illiterate, and they had been in the workforce for almost 20 years. Intrigued, I checked their personnel file (I had not originally hired them). I was astonished to find a C.V. and cover letter better written than my own. Ghost-written. And, as I later found out, by their spouse. But their spouse wasn't there to help, post-hire, with their business email composition.
My intention is not to come off as a writing snob. My own career Achilles heel is MS Excel spreadsheets -- they make my head throb. I winced and squirmed through
Intro to MS Excel and
Intermediate MS Excel courses. After nearly 10 years of formal and on-the-job instruction, I can for the most part use MS Excel at a satisfactory level. My next frontier is pivot tables.
If writing is your Achilles hell (
sic intended!), then please consider continuing education courses in business writing, and then please practice writing at every opportunity. In your volunteer work. Helping your children with their homework. Writing love letters. Facebook posts. If I can white-knuckle MS Excel, you can do the same with your writing for business.
Before I send any important piece of writing out - proposal, job application, blog post - I let the best writer I know proof my work: my husband
Joel. He just edited out a repeated word and pointed out two of my signature marathon sentences in this blog post, as a matter of fact. (
Thanks, Hon!)
If I'm at work: I read and re-read my work at least 4 times. And then I wait a while before I hit
send, sometimes until the next morning. It's worked consistently for me.
Sending in a job application is not a speed competition; if you send in your job application within the first week a job is posted, that is considered an expedient response.
If yours is the first application I receive and it has multiple errors, I will continue to look at the other applications. Clearly, quality counts in this as well as other business writing scenarios.
I believe writing is one of the ultimate acts of human manifestation: you can literally write your life. I have. And I love witnessing that act of creation in others.
I have only one request: please don't write and send out crap. Because what's inside you is so much better than that. And decision-makers are waiting to discover and purchase the gifts you have to offer.
A prosperous week to you and yours!
