The importance of spell check cannot be overstated. Weather you are preparing your resume, an email, a presentation, or another form of business communication you cannot skip this step. It should go without saying but it is often overlooked. ALWAY, ALWAYS, ALWAYS hit spell check.
I was once preparing a job-search email, hit spell check and realized I had misspelled the recipient’s name. Had I not caught the error, my job-search query would have been over before it even began. In my career I have seen countless resumes and cover letters with typos. Those are the ones that do not make it to the top of the stack. A major and consistent complaint from job applicants is that they never hear back from employers after applying for a position. Many candidates would do well to go back and double and triple check there documentation. Their “hit” rate might increase if they do.
Once you have gone through the spell-check suggestions be sure to re-read your whole document slowly to ensure you have used the correct words (or have not omitted a word). You many have spelled “there” correctly so it will not flag as an error. But do you need to use “their” instead? Or “whether” instead of “weather”? Spell check won’t let you know that’s wrong.
Did you notice when you spotted the errors in this post how it distracted you from the message? That’s what those types of errors do…take away from the message you are trying to convey.
Happy hunting!
RecruitingShingle 
I noticed the spelling mistakes straight away and -after reading the title- I assumed you meant to do it BUT I wasn’t sure…which made me read the rest to find out 🙂 Very clever. Great post xB
I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I hate to admit this considering the content of this post but when I had some new business cards made recently I actually ok’d the proof without catching the fact that I had misspelled the name of my website. Can’t blame spell check or anyone but myself for that. I don’t know if it’s any consolation but I must have handed out 100 of them before anyone pointed it out to me. I got caught snoozing and it bit me. Live and learn!
A friend of mine did that too…and like you handed out quite a few. Unfortunately I was the one to point out his mistakes – I have never seen someones facial expression change as quickly as his did ha ha.
[…] Spelling 101 (recruitingshingle.com) […]
I got another key tip from a graduate professor I had. He said in order to find errors, you can read a letter or document backwards. He said that when you read something that you generated from beginning to end, you may add words subconsciously when they are really not there. If you read a document from end to beginning, your subconscious mind will not engage and you should be able to catch words or sentences that do not make sense.
I have heard that as well. Great advice. However, I do not have that kind of discipline. That’s why I go back and re-read it slowly…as in one word at a time. When I force myself to slow down, my subconscious doesn’t usualy play tricks on me.
Reading out loud always does it for me