Posted by: maureen in seduction, detail, art on
Jul 27, 2010
Don't have time to proofread that message before you hit the send button? Mark Jeffries thinks you might be better off not sending the message at all.
Mark's the author of The Art of Business Seduction and is stunned by how much correspondence is littered with spelling mistakes. The authors are either careless, he says, or clueless. Is that what you’re going for?
I had a lot of fun with Mark on the talk show recently. He was a stockbroker when it hit him, out of the blue, there had to be more to life. He was walking to work early one morning--it was always early--and saw the vapor trails of an airplane overhead. He wanted to be on that plane, moving away, doing something different. Now he helps people become more effective by paying attention to the details some of us dismiss as unimportant.
Don't think your handshake matters? Get a grip. Everything matters! And it would be a shame to lose that dream job to someone who isn’t more qualified--just more refined.
The thing I found most inspiring about Mark was how he looks at today, and I'll tell you about that…tomorrow.
Posted by: maureen in snowflake, detail, attention on
Jan 27, 2010
If your resume sports typos, what's the potential employer going to think? That you're suddenly going to pay more attention to detail once you get the job? Probably not. So make sure you proofread everything you send out, electronic or otherwise.
I heard a great tip once, to proofread backwards. Start at the end of your document and look at each word on its own, working from right to left and bottom to top. This lessens the chance you’ll read for meaning and skip over mistakes. A spell checker won't flag the word "pear" for you, for example, when you meant to say "pare." But when you're proofreading backwards you're likely to exclaim, "Pear! What is the word 'pear' doing on my resume? I meant pare!"
I've proofread each of my three books backwards, and caught things I never would have otherwise. Not just typos, either. Any kid flopped upside down over a couch cushion will tell you how different the living room looks with furniture hanging from the ceiling. Get a fresh look at your material before you release it. You won't be sorry.
This is where I thank Darrell and Katie for their work on my blog! I have what I've heard is a typical husband who uh, loves to help. And a typical teenager who loves to point out my mistakes. Or did I get that reversed?
No matter what precautions you take, you probably won't catch every boo-boo until it's too late. That's when I hope you'll think of what I learned from an editor at the University of Minnesota Press: "Snowflakes aren't perfect, but they're still pretty cool."
If I were you, I'd still go for perfect when approaching potential employers. It would be a shame to take yourself out of the running for that dream job because you transposed a couple of digits in your phone number. Career consultants say you wouldn't believe how often that happens.
