Re: How do hiring companies view TW resumes?

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

A resume is like any other technical document. You have to trim it to fit the needs of the audience. If you think you may be stunning HR people by using esoteric terms, rewrite it. It would be a simple correction and there's no good reason to take a chance on losing job possibilities in order to stick with a particular vocabulary.

I think it's not a matter of them thinking they are better at spelling. They're simply proceeding based on what they know. HR departments are usually staffed by people who are not as tech-savvy as you are. Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by simple inability.  :-) 


--- On Tue, 3/16/10, Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:

> From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>
> Subject: How do hiring companies view TW resumes?
> To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
> Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010, 8:23 AM
> My resume necessarily contains many
> arcane terms, some of which are 
> flagged by MS Word as spelling errors. (Y'all's resumes
> have the same 
> feature, of course.) Personally, I use MS Word's spelling
> correction 
> magno cum grano salis, but I've just discovered, to my
> surprise, that 
> some HR departments might be judging the soundness of a
> writer's ability 
> by MS Word's count of misspellings in his resume.
> 
> An agent at a placement firm asked me, "There seems to be a
> spelling 
> error here, the word 'emergy'. That should be energy,
> right?" The word 
> itself is cute, esoteric and unfortunate, but it was indeed
> the subject 
> of a thesis that I helped a PhD candidate rewrite.
> 
> I had a sinking feeling that my rejection for "perfect" job
> matches, 
> getting no interview where it was rather clear to me that I
> was the most 
> appropriate candidate, could be from my inability to spell
> that word 
> "correctly."
> 
> The next version of my resume will omit it.
> 
> Does anyone else have evidence that HR people might be so
> misaligned 
> with reality as to assume that they can spell technical
> terms better 
> than tech writers?
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 
> Use Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor, Microsoft Word, or HTML
> and 
> produce desktop, Web, or print deliverables. Just write (or
> import) 
> and Doc-To-Help does the rest. Free trial: http://www.doctohelp.com
> 
> Explore CAREER options and paths related to Technical
> Writing,
> learn to create SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS documents, and
> get tips on FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATION best practices. Free
> at:
> http://www.ModernAnalyst.com
> 
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Use Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor, Microsoft Word, or HTML and 
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