As this BBC article explains, correct spelling is also very important for webpages. Shoppers can get turned off by spelling mistakes on websites. Maybe I should also add one other thing: it doesn’t apply to only webpages in the English language. No matter what language is used for a website, it is imperative that the spelling and grammar are correct.

That is why companies should always think seriously about employing someone who can check on their communication material before it is released to the world. Better be safe than to be embarrassed or worse, to lose the potential business.

So here is the BBC article. Happy reading!

Mr Duncombe, who runs travel, mobile phones and clothing websites, says that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.

“Often these cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills,” says Mr Duncombe.

And he says that the struggle to recruit enough staff who can spell means that this sector of the economy is not as efficient as it might be.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics published last month showed internet sales in the UK running at £527m per week.

“I know that industry bemoaning the education system is nothing new but it is becoming more and more of a problem with more companies going online.

“This is because when you sell or communicate on the internet 99% of the time it is done by the written word.”

Mr Duncombe says that it is possible to identify the specific impact of a spelling mistake on sales.

He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

“If you project this across the whole of internet retail then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes,” says Mr Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please group.

Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.

“You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website.”

When recruiting school and university leavers, Mr Duncombe says too many applications have contained spelling mistakes or poor grammar.

“Some people even used text speak in their cover letter,” he says.

Even among those who appeared to be able to spell, he says that a written test, without access to a computer spellchecker, revealed further problems with spelling.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, says that in some informal parts of the internet, such as Facebook, there is greater tolerance towards spelling and grammar.

“However, there are other aspects, such as a home page or commercial offering that are not among friends and which raise concerns over trust and credibility,” said Professor Dutton.

“In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue.”

James Fothergill, the CBI’s head of education and skills, said: “Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff’s skills up-to-scratch.

“This situation is a real concern and the government must make the improvement of basic literacy and numeracy skills of all school and college leavers a top priority.”

• For starters, the resume is the most important tool in a job search. It contains a brief summary of your education, qualifications, skills and experience, and it is usually accompanied by a cover letter which talks about the position you are applying for and how you can use your skills and experience in this position.
• Always write your resume with a purpose in mind. That way, you are focused on a specific job title and you also address the employer’s requirements for the position. The more you know about the duties and skills required for the job, the better you can organise your resume around these points.
• Select your most relevant accomplishments, skills and experience (note that the key word is “relevant”) and include them into your resume.
• When you first sit down to write your resume, recall information about yourself and list down the most important details such as your pertinent course work, paid and volunteer work experiences, academic awards, projects, activities and skills. A suggestion: don’t leave anything out. You can always review them and delete items that are not relevant to the position you are applying to. Then, fill in the details: dates, titles, names, responsibilities and achievements.

All these will not be easy and it can take you many hours, but you’ll need to persevere to come up with your first draft. It’s quite normal for anyone to have several drafts written because you may realize that an earlier draft wasn’t written clearly enough or you may have forgotten to add an important point.

Always ask yourself if your latest draft accurately represents your skills and experience, and whether or not it demonstrates that you are an ideal candidate for the job you have in mind. If you haven’t achieved this, keep on writing.

After you’ve completed a final draft to your satisfaction, proofread it. Better yet, give it to someone else who can help you to proofread it. If you can, get it read by someone from the same industry as the job you are eyeing.

But you should remember that everyone has their own idea on how to write an effective resume. This can confuse you so the best advice I can give you at this point is that you can consider them but you don’t have to accept all their ideas. Ultimately your resume should reflect your style, your goals and your personality.

AP Search Management Recruitment Sdn Bhd director KH Teoh believes that with the present shrinking job market, there is a greater need for job seekers to write their resumes and present themselves well during interviews.

Employers will be looking for key items, depending on the applicants’ work experience. Entry-level candidates should highlight what they did in university/college – whether they had undertaken any projects, and how the projects demonstrated their organisational skills and planning capabilities. Those with work experience are likely to be asked about their (previous) job responsibilities, achievements, problem solving and team-building skills, and perhaps their personality type.”

Teoh also advised job seekers to venture beyond the Malaysian market and be able to diversify by using their core skills in a different industry. “They should upgrade themselves through courses and training. Those who really can’t get a job can also consider an apprenticeship or training programmes that offer assisted allowance to gain additional skills.”

However, this does not mean that nobody is writing the traditional, old-fashioned resume any more. Far from it, many people are still doing this because there are occasions when a written resume can be more appropriate than an online one. The only difference is that, instead of keeping type-written copies, their resumes are now stored as a Word document in their computers, ready to be printed whenever needed.

When you prepare a resume the traditional way, your individual style is always reflected in the way you write or format the document. On the other hand, an online resume normally follows a structured format. The self-written resume can thus often look more creative. You usually do not have such flexibility with the online version.

One of the features that you’ll find on JobStreet.com is the ability to show off your individualism and creativity by allowing employers to look at your self-written resume. This feature — Upload Resume — allows you to, yes, upload your written resume to your MyJobStreet account.

The resume that you upload does not over-ride the online version that you first created on JobStreet.com. Rather, both versions co-exist side-by-side and when you apply to any job on JobStreet.com, the employer can choose the version that he prefers.

Keeping a self-written resume on JobStreet.com is not an absolute must but if you do, please make sure that every time you have something new to add to your qualifications, experience or skills, you should update the information in both resumes or otherwise the employer may miss out on some information in one of them.

I received an interesting email today. Someone asked me whether it was all right to pad his resume.

In case you don’t know what this means, it means making a lie in your resume. Adding qualifications or experience or skills which you do not have.

At one time or another, some people may have felt the need to make up some small lies to put into their resume because they were in desperate search of jobs. Possibly, they would think that it really wouldn’t matter because they won’t be found out. A small gamble, perhaps.

Think again. Even if your potential employer don’t go out to make reference checks on your abilities, you may be found out in the end if you cannot perform in accordance with your claims. Wouldn’t that make you look bad?

I’ve always told people around me that they should never lie about anything. Nobody will believe you in the end. But even before you reach this stage, the consequence of making a lie is that one lie will lead to another. You’ll be making one more lie to cover up your last one and it never ends.

If you make a lie in your job, the worst that can happen to you is that you’ll be asked to leave. No big deal, you may say, but what comes next after this? Are you planning never to lie again? If so, how are you going to explain to your next employer why you left your previous job? It’s not going to be easy.

What about your resume? Maybe, you’d think that you can avoid not mentioning your previous job in the resume. But explaining the gap in your employment may be a challenge too. What were you doing during those months or years of inacitivity?

Either way, the only one that’s going to end up a loser will be the liar. So, coming back to the original question, would it be all right to pad one’s resume?

I think I have answered the question.

(This article of mine originally appeared in BlogStreet.)

I wouldn’t recommend you to do this but in Florida, a man had himself videotaped jumping off a causeway bridge. No, it wasn’t any attempt to escape from the gloomy economy crisis in the United States but just to get himself a little more attention for his resume.

Police there said that the man, Christopher Grima, wanted to apply to a six-month job paying US$105,000 on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the bridge-jumping stunt was supposed to make his application shocking so that his prospective employers would give him a closer look.

According to Grima, he tried to leave quickly after making the 40-foot jump but unfortunately for him, the police arrived before he could get out of the water. He received a court summons for breach of peace and disorderly conduct but at least, he got his video made.

There are two schools of thought. One says that it is quite all right to name the references. The other says no, leave this part out completely.

There is no right or wrong answer. It all depends on your preference but given a choice, I will leave them out. At most, I’ll just write “Available upon request” in my resume.

Don’t think that naming your references in the resume will impress the hiring manager, even if the references are influential people in the industry. An experienced hiring manager worth his salt will not be so easily swayed but will short-list a candidate according to his skills and qualifications.

It’s after the candidate has gone through a round or two of interviews in a company and stands a strong chance of being hired that the hiring manager will normally ask for the references. Then you give.

The big corporations will use the information for a reference check on you. They’ll be phoning the people you named, so you must make it a point to let your references know in advance.

But first, before all this, make sure that you have already asked permission from your references. It’s important and it’s only courtesy if you want someone to help you.

And second, always keep in contact with your references every now and then. Phone and say “hello” to them once in a while. If not for anything else, it is to keep your professional relationship or friendship going.

Lastly, you’ll have to prepare your references if you have applied to specific jobs recently. Tell them that the companies may call them. Don’t ever let your references be caught off-guard when a telephone call comes through to them.

Now, who should be your references? Normally, you’ll be required to give two.

The first should know you in a professional capacity such as your immediate supervisor in your previous employment. Obviously, you can’t name a supervisor in your current employment. It will be a very strange situation that your current employer will want to put in a good word for you.

Your second reference can also be one that knows you professionally or he can be someone who has known you well for quite a while and can vouch for you.

Fresh graduates or people seeking their first jobs are often faced with a problem finding suitable references because they have not been exposed to working life.

Hiring managers know this and they may not actually ask for any from you. But if they do, try naming someone that’s close to your family who may know you well enough, such as your parent’s close friend. However, if this is not possible, just be frank and tell the hiring manager that you do not have any.

One bad choice that many fresh graduates make is to name their lecturers as their references. Common … with hundreds or thousands of students graduating every year, do you really expect your lecturer to know each and every one of you except superficially?

I’ve known cases where the hiring manager purposely asked the lecturer to verify some wrong facts about a job seeker and the lecturer really affirmed them. That showed how much the lecturer was in tune with his students.
So, please avoid naming your lecturer. And a final point to note: if you are already working for some years and have progressed through a few jobs, and you still have a lecturer from your past named as a reference in your resume, it will do you well to spend some time to update your whole resume. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself?

About the writer
Quah Seng-Sun is Malaysia’s only Certified Professional Resume Writer and a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches (PARW/CC) which is based in the United States. His opinions do not necessarily reflect that of JobStreet.com

Before I answer this answer, I have to say that in the course of my work in JobStreet.com, I have seen resumes that go as long as 19 printed pages as well as resumes that fill up only one A4-size paper.

Which would I want to read? Well, if I have difficulty in going to sleep tonight, the 19-page resume will be my preferred choice of getting into dreamland fast.

But if I have no time — and who has all the time to waste away nowadays — the one- or two-page resume is what I will pick out as my reading material of the moment.

Yes, folks, the open secret is out. Employers no longer have the time to read long-winded resumes. In fact, resumes are read for only 15 to 20 seconds before a decision is taken to shortlist it or put it aside. This is all the time you have to convince the employer whether your resume merits further reading. Therefore , if you can say all you have to say within one or two pages of a resume, this is what they want.

A resume is not the story of your life. It has never been. So don’t go round telling employers what you have been doing since small.

However, a resume is a summary of your life’s achievement in terms of work experience and qualifications. Stick to the facts and list them down in a way that is easily read and understood. Hint: use bullet points.

But I have also been told by jobseekers that most times, a lengthy resume cannot be avoided in an electronic format, such as one that is prepared online.

This is true. However, when you prepare an online resume and you use it to apply to jobs through JobStreet.com for example, the employer will be processing your application online too. The employer will be given an online tool to enable him to sort and select the relevant information that’s required.

That said, it is still important that you keep to the facts in your online resume and make sure that you do not tell a long story.

The important thing you should remember is that you should have an online version of your resume as well as one that’s formatted for print.

Not all job applications can be submitted online; some will require you to write in and attach a text resume. And it is this latter version of your resume which should be short and crisp — within two pages.

About the writer

Quah Seng Sun is Malaysia’s only Certified Professional Resume Writer and a member of the Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches (PARW/CC) which is based in the United States.