TIL my resume had a typo for 6 months before I noticed

I sent out maybe 40 job applications over half a year and got maybe 3 callbacks. I figured my cover letters were just weak. Then my buddy asked to see my resume and pointed out I spelled 'managed' as 'manged' in the first bullet point. Six months, 40 apps, and one dumb typo. Has anyone else missed something obvious like that on their own stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

thompson.xena4h ago

Oh man, that's brutal but I totally get it. What helped me was reading my resume out loud backwards word by word, it makes you actually see each word instead of skimming. Another thing I did was print it out and use a ruler to go line by line. Also had a friend look it over with fresh eyes before I sent anything. It's wild how our brains just fill in what we expect to see.

milam422h ago

Man, the ruler trick is actually genius. I never thought of that but it makes so much sense. Our eyes definitely just skip over stuff when we're used to seeing the same document a hundred times, especially when you've been tweaking it for weeks. Having someone else look at it is huge too, they catch little stuff you'd never notice because you're too close to it. I had a buddy point out a typo in my email address once, which would have been a disaster if I sent it out like that. Shoutout to @thompson.xena for sharing that backwards reading tip, I'm definitely trying that next time I'm stuck staring at my own resume.