5 Tips to Check Your Resume for Canada Employment
Having excellent verbal and written communication skills is critical when applying for a job vacancy. Recruiters are looking for professionals with a knack for communicating clearly and effectively. One of the things that will help them evaluate your performance in this aspect is your resume. Grammatical errors and typos can ruin your chances of getting a job. It would be best if you proofread it. Here are some practical tips to help you do that.
Get it Printed
The human brain can barely capture the details of a softcopy CV as well as it reads printed text. Once you have typed and edited your resume, print it out for a more thorough review.
It helps to print the resume in a different font type. For example, if you typed it using the Times New Roman, change the font and print it in Arial. It may be a simple change, but it helps you to identify typos that don’t appear plainly. The secret to using this tip is to save the final copy and change the font type in the second copy to restore the original font.
Read it Verbally; Backward
We all learnt that reading out loud is not a recommended practice. When proofreading your resume, it helps. As awkward as it may sound, reading every word of the document out loud highlights one or two spelling mistakes you may have made while typing.
After you’ve read it, proofread it again, this time starting from the bottom to the top. This approach is effective in noting the spelling mistakes that your editing software failed to correct.
Let a Friend Help
Being the one who has written the resume, some grammatical errors and misspelt words may not be so apparent when proofreading the document. Therefore, invite a friend and ask them to go through it. They will easily underline some awkwardly placed phrases, missing punctuations, and discrepancies in the format.
Here’s the trick: Tell your friend to briefly read the resume, and then ask them what job position you seek and why you are qualified for it. If they can’t offer an answer straight away, it’s a red flag that your resume needs further editing to clearly communicate your job qualifications.
Don’t Rely Solely on Spell Check
Spell checks have made it easy for job applicants to write and edit their resumes, thus reducing grammatical and spelling errors. Still, you might find a misplaced word in a section within your CV that takes away all the sense from it. For example, you may write “attacking” instead of “attaching”, the spell check won’t note that. Take advantage of text editors, such as Grammarly and Slick Write to catch some subtle contextual spelling errors that “evade” spell check.
Try a Reputed Resume-Review Service
You need not undergo the hassle of writing a resume when you can get help from professional review solutions. An excellent example is TopResume. The CV-review service proofreads the document and provides feedback for you to work on. Besides providing helpful tips on writing a winning resume, a TopResume representative also explains how the service tracks and assesses an applicant’s resume to ensure it meets the job specification and description.
In this era, there are plenty of resources to help job candidates write resumes, cover letters, or work samples with zero grammatical and spelling mistakes. If you are not skilled in writing a resume, hire a professional CV writer to handle the job.