Blog post by Brian White, Principal Consultant, New Zealand
This day and age we are relying more and more on helpful tools like autocorrect and spellcheck – but these clearly are not entirely reliable, and examples of hilarious disasters are myriad online. It was only last week one of the more infamous typos occurred on Twitter and was an instant viral meme for all the wrong reasons.
There is a lot of information out there on ‘how to make your CV stand out’ but you want to make sure it doesn’t stand out for the wrong reasons – chock full of typos and grammatical errors. Naturally working in the creative sphere, I’ve seen some CV’s & portfolios ranging from the interesting to the downright bizarre and while things like fonts & layout can be subjective – typos are definitely a no-no.
A classic example – a few years ago I perused a young graphic designer’s CV packed with so many typos, I actually rang the candidate to see if they had sent me an early draft in error. But what stood out most was under ‘skills’ was the line ironically highlighting their ‘attention to deatail’.
Studio managers particularly are sticklers for detail, and can spot a typo or bad spacing from across the room – so please spend some time getting the details right on what could be your most vital selling tool, and make sure your first impression is a good one!
Emails, cover letters, portfolios and CVs riddled with grammatical and spelling errors really do you a disservice – especially when your role might be to layout text, write copy, follow briefs correctly and represent the employers brand accurately and make sure they in turn leave a good first impression for their clients.
Matthew Inman from ‘The Oatmeal’ has this informative and amusing guide to some common errors as well as a treasure trove of other grammatical tips on his website. Enjoy over your next ‘covfefe’ break 😉
