Typos in resumes

["Huber, Mike" <mrhuber -at- SOFTWARE -dot- ROCKWELL -dot- COM>]

Part of the reason this discussion has gone on so long, I think, has to
do with what point of view is being addressed. A question of identifying
the audience, if you will.

If we are addressing each other as writers, advising as to how to
present a resume, then obviously "no typos" is the way to go. If I were
preparing a resume, I would consider it a document with high value and a
high need for editing. It would (I hope) have no errors of any kind.

If we are addressing each other as people who examine resumes attempting
to identify quality writers, the issue is more complex. A resume could
be considered a sample of the writers work, but a resume is not a
typical technical document. For one thing, the review cycle can be a
problem. For another, it is a single-page (or possibly two page)
document that probably took significantly more hours per page to develop
than are reasonable for most documents. In my experience with the hiring
process, which may not be typical, there is neither the time nor the
large stack of reasonably appropriate resumes to apply rules such as
"one typo and out." The funny part of all of this is that I haven't seen
any well organized and prepared resumes for writers that indicated
appropriate background but had typos. I consider that to be a
statistical quirk resulting from the very small sample of good resumes
I've seen. Most of the writers we hired had very badly designed and
presented headhunter-produced resumes that they had no control over. All
the writers we hired brought good samples to the interviews. As I said,
though, our situation might not be typical - we interviewed every
prospect that had any relevant experience or training. There weren't
that many.

On the number of pages issue: I didn't read any second pages. When they
were present, the headers indicated information I didn't care about, and
the first page usually had enough information to tell me the applicant
wasn't qualified.

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