Resumes and Cover Letters: A Quick Checklist Before You Hit Submit

Having spoken to the national recruit managers of top management and strategy consulting firms, I guarantee you that they come across the same common mistakes year by year when receiving resumes and cover letters; and for these applicants, they will issue an automatic red cross of disapproval.

This article addresses a checklist that you should perform all the time before you hit your submit button:

1. Proofread! Check spelling mistakes automatically and manually:

This one is fairly obvious, but still overlooked, mainly due to the fact that so many resumes and cover letters are written the day before. For these people, they should probably read GradTips’ article on ‘Why you should spend more time on your CV or Resume’.

This is the the largest repeat offender and the most common mistake for potential applicants. Make sure that you use multiple iterations of an automatic spell checker, whether it be Microsoft Word, or even a text field in Firefox. If you cannot check it automatically, then read it and manually fix up your spelling mistakes the old fashioned way! There is only one chance to make a first impression - and in many cases, your resume, combined with your cover letter, are the only things an employer has to gauge an impression of you. Simple equation: Incorrect spelling = an employee that cannot spell.

2. Print off the resume first before submitting it! Check its legibility:

Is your resume and cover letter legible? The advent of the internet and Portable Document Formats (PDF) have allowed the viewing of documents without physically printing them, however there are many reviewers that still print out a resume before reading it. Have you done this before? What may look great on the monitor or lcd screen, could possibly look absolutely horrible on paper. Font-size, colour, depth, and CV clutter can be easily dealt with by a simple print out of your resume and cover letter. Change the format to make sure its easily read on an A4 piece of paper, and once you think you are happy with this, proceed to point 3:

3. Provide a copy of your Resume and Cover Letter to a close family member or friend to proof-read:

Although you may think you have read over your resume and cover letter almost 10 times over each, you will still miss out particular grammatical mistakes. A common one which I always see when proof reading a friend’s essay is “as supposed to” instead of “as opposed to” - Little things like this will be extremely difficult to pick up by yourself, as you are already used to your own intonation, speech and writing tone. Give a copy to someone close to you who can understand subjective and objective feedback.

4. Make sure that your Resume or Cover Letter does not contain a competitor’s name!

This is a big one - IF you are applying for McKinsey, and feel like reusing your application for Bain, word for word, think again. While in many cases people get away with directly copying and replacing each time it appeared in their document, it doesn’t really help your CV stand out at all. What it does do effectively is provide the reviewer an average CV to use as a benchmark as to whether they give you a green light or red light.

5. Check all URLs that you have place in your Resumes - are they broken?

It’s great to promote websites that have content about your previous working experience and the like, but if the link is broken, your reviewer will perceive you to be relatively disorganised than the rest of the people with working links. There are a few reasons why this could occur: perhaps the URL of the workplace has changed recently; perhaps the link itself is referring to the wrong website, with the name of the link differing to where the link takes you; or perhaps you simply made the URL up from assumptions. Perform a thorough audit check of each website link to make sure they are all working well. Also…

6. Make sure you have suitable and appropriate URLs:

Websites containing obscene content such as profanity, imagery of nudity, jokes or anything unprofessional should be avoided. If you are promoting a personal website portfolio, make sure you clear out all of this out!

Likewise, make sure you email the resume and cover letter from a formal email address, containing your name or a formal derivative of your name.An email address suchas firstname_lastname@hotmail.com works well. Something like sunshine_family69@yahoo.com will definitely leave a sour taste in the reviewer’s mouth!

7. Check and test your contact details out:

Seems obvious, but if you put your cell phone / mobile number on your resume, make sure it works. Even if the number is correct, make sure that you are reachable and that you can physically ring the number! Check if your email address works as well, if you are like me, you’ll probably have different email addresses served on different hosts, so its best to check if your inbox is currently receiving email.

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