Please Proofread Before Posting

I retired from my brick and mortar editing job last year. Six months later, I decided to look for either a part-time job or temporary contract work. I figured that getting out of the house for a few hours a day would be a good idea. And the extra money would be a plus.

Curious to see what type of responses I would get, I posted a “résumé” on Craigslist. The majority of résumés posted there are short job-wanted ads comprising one or two paragraphs. I posted a modified version of my résumé, with identifying information omitted. In two days I got three responses—all suspected scams. I decided to enjoy retirement for a little while longer.

However, before I submitted my own job-wanted ad, I read a lot of résumés posted on Craigslist. I was surprised at what I found. Way too many of those posts included bad grammar and sentence structure and/or were peppered with typos. For example, one job seeker wrote, “I am very throw [thorough?] and good at what I do.” An individual looking for carpentry work offered “free estamets.” Another person declared, “I am not afraid to talk to the pubic.” Yikes!

A little proofreading would be a good thing to do before posting job-wanted ads. After all, the goal is to get hired. Yes, a couple mistakes are okay in an on-the-fly Facebook post or in an informal text message. But people should take a little care when posting something that a prospective employer might see.

And legitimate companies do check the job-wanted ads/résumés on various sites. HR personnel are, most likely, unimpressed by those badly written résumés on Craigslist. My post wasn’t earthshaking prose. But at least it was literate.