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Resumes are inherently hard to prepare because the requirements are often deliberately withheld. Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar

Resumes are inherently hard to prepare because the requirements are often deliberately withheld. Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar problems that's a big red flag, but other than basic linguistic elements it's not really a fair way to evaluate someone's technical communication skills. Some companies treat the job posting itself as a type of puzzle you're expected to guess at with your cover letter and resume. Also, a lot of job postings are terribly written, extremely vague or otherwise problematic, so it's not a one-sided problem. It's hard to know if you're meeting the employer's needs when their posting is asking for someone who could engineer a mission to Mars on their lunch break and will work for $50,000 and 1 week of vacation.

tempestn 12y ago
In the intro of the article, it stated that the strongest signal of applicant quality found on resumes was the number of typos and grammatical errors. Perhaps that was an exaggeration or even a joke, but if not, I would agree that this should be a red flag, regardless of a person's qualifications. (I would similarly judge a potential employer on the quality of their job posting. I know when I write a job posting I go to a great deal of effort to make sure it reads well and reflects our company as well as possible.)
kabouseng 12y ago
"Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar problems that's a big red flag" I agree. The same could also be said about a companies job posting. If the job posting is "vague or problematic", it also indicates the company has no idea of what skill set they need. This has many parallels with a client not properly being able to specify his requirements. Usually if a client cannot properly specify his requirements, he also underestimate the amount of work / cost it will require to develop. The same with a job posting, if they cant properly specify a job posting, an employer also might think the job is easy or he can pay someone peanuts to do it.

tempestn 12y ago

In the intro of the article, it stated that the strongest signal of applicant quality found on resumes was the number of typos and grammatical errors. Perhaps that was an exaggeration or even a joke, but if not, I would agree that this should be a red flag, regardless of a person's qualifications. (I would similarly judge a potential employer on the quality of their job posting. I know when I write a job posting I go to a great deal of effort to make sure it reads well and reflects our company as well as possible.)

kabouseng 12y ago

"Granted, if a resume has basic formatting, spelling or grammar problems that's a big red flag" I agree. The same could also be said about a companies job posting. If the job posting is "vague or problematic", it also indicates the company has no idea of what skill set they need. This has many parallels with a client not properly being able to specify his requirements. Usually if a client cannot properly specify his requirements, he also underestimate the amount of work / cost it will require to develop. The same with a job posting, if they cant properly specify a job posting, an employer also might think the job is easy or he can pay someone peanuts to do it.