5 Resume and Cover Letter Spelling Errors That Could Cost You the Job

Marisa J. Carroll is a copy editor, writer, and grammar instructor based in New York

4 min read • Originally published April 6, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

Marisa J. Carroll is a copy editor, writer, and grammar instructor based in New York

4 min read • Originally published April 6, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

You know you’re qualified for the position, but you could derail your chances of being hired if your resume and cover letter contain typos and misspellings—especially if you’re applying for a content or editorial job.

No matter what kind of work you’re going for, you can make sure potential employers focus on your best qualities by keeping your resume and cover letter free of the five common trouble spots below.

1. Misspelled names. First things first: Since you’re sending a cover letter to a specific person (after all, “To Whom It May Concern” is a big no-no), triple-check the spelling of the recipient’s name. Pay special attention to first names with common variants. (You may be accustomed to seeing Alison spelled with one l, but Allison and Alyson are possibilities too.) If any spelling error will pop out to the reader in neon lights, it’s this one.

2. Misspelled action verbs. Resume-writing experts recommend beginning each bullet point with an action verb, but several of the most useful ones (achieve, acquire, analyze, guarantee, liaise, synthesize) are frequently misspelled. Keep a master list of any verbs that regularly give you pause, and add relevant adjectives (knowledgeable, necessary, noticeable) and nouns (acquisition, calendar, commitment, privilege) for good measure. Update your list as needed—and consult it often.

3. Incorrect verb tenses. Speaking of actions verbs, the ones you list for your current position should appear in the present tense (“Lead monthly workshops”). Action verbs describing your former jobs should be in the past tense (“Led monthly workshops”).

4. Mixed-up homophones. Homophones are words that sound alike but have different spellings and meanings. The spellings of the words below seem straightforward—which may be the reason we gloss over them when scanning our work for errors. Take advantage of the “find” function of your word-processing software to hunt down and highlight every instance of the words listed. That way, you can double-check that you’re using each one correctly.

You’re/Your You’re is a contraction of the words you are. Your is the possessive adjective (which shows ownership) for you. “You’re the best candidate for this position. Your resume makes that absolutely clear.”

They’re/Their They’re is a contraction of the words they are. Their is the possessive adjective for they. “Many qualified applicants applied, but they’re not as impressive as you are. Indeed, their resumes are no match for yours.”

It’s/Its It’s is a contraction of the words it is. Its is the possessive adjective for it. “It’s only a matter of time before the company hires you. You’ll increase its sales tenfold.”

Let’s/Lets Let’s is a contraction of the words let us. Lets is the present tense of the verb let (third-person singular). “Let’s discuss the perks of this position. Your employee badge lets you into the executive lounge, for one.”

5. Inconsistent spellings of repeated terms. Lock down a style for terms that appear more than once. On your resume, you’ll need to list dates of employment for each position, but dates can be styled in several different ways. The month can be spelled out in full (January 2014), abbreviated (Jan. 2014), or listed as a numeral (01/2014). All these choices are legitimate, but pick one format and stick with it. Otherwise, you’ll risk looking sloppy and haphazard.

Your proofreading strategy:

By all means, run spell-check—but only as your first defense. Spell-check can help you catch typos, but it may not catch mixed-up homophones (see above), and it can’t fact-check the spellings of proper names.

Enlist a member of the grammar police. You know that friend on Facebook who can’t resist pointing out spelling mistakes? Now is the time to use those powers for good. Ask your pal to proofread your resume in exchange for a tasty beverage at a local cafe. Bonus: While you’re there, you can study up on other tricky spellings, such as cappuccino, macchiato, and decaffeinated.

Read your resume and cover letter out loud. When we’re typing quickly, short prepositions (to, of, and for) and articles (a, an, and the) have a mysterious tendency to go missing. Even spookier? When we’re reading quickly, our mind has a tendency to fill in those gaps without our awareness. It’s the literary equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Reading aloud encourages us to slow down, so we’re more likely to notice when pesky little words go MIA.

Print out your files one last time before you send them. Whenever we go back into a document to make a change, there is a possibility we’ll introduce a new error. (It’s fun being human, isn’t it?) In addition, auto-correct functions can work lightning-fast, making it easy for random and nonsensical “fixes” to slip by us. As a precaution, always make a clean printout after editing your files. Take a short break to refresh your eyes, and reread your work one last time. The file is ready for attachment only when the last printout is mistake-free.

Topics:

Get Hired, Resumes & Cover Letters

Productivity

Get More Done With Less Effort: Smart Productivity Tips That Work

Become a productivity pro with these clever ideas to maximize your workday—and your job search

3 min read • Originally published April 7, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

3 min read • Originally published April 7, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

How to Maximize Your Workday published on The Executive Education Navigator blog.

How can we manage our tasks and responsibilities more quickly and effectively? Personal productivity expert Robert Pozen has made it his mission to help executives develop answers to this question. Pozen is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management, a senior research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of the book Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours.

“I’ve found very few people who find they’re particularly productive,” Pozen reports, even when it comes to senior managers in highly successful institutions.

He adds that the participants in his exec-ed courses generally fall into one of two categories: “There are the people who view themselves as inefficient procrastinators—some are what I call ‘heavy-duty procrastinators,’ who can’t start anything till day before,” he explains. “And then there are those who view themselves as pretty efficient, but they’re encountering difficult workplace issues and having trouble getting through the things they have to do.”

For both inherent procrastinators and those facing external obstacles to productivity, Pozen points to three key areas where leaders often need help in using their time more effectively:

Deal With Email
Doesn’t it feel like we spend most of our life on email? Pozen’s approach is that, really, only 20 percent of all emails require a response. It’s best to deal with those messages right away and file the rest.

Delegate
People who make it to the C-suite do so because they’re huge producers and tend to be believe they are the best person to do certain strategic tasks. The key, though, is to spend your precious time on tasks that can only be done well by you. The rest can and should be delegated.

Keep Long-Term Goals in Sight
Execs often shuttle from one meeting to another without relation to their own ultimate objectives. Managers should learn to systematically prioritize their yearly goals and integrate steps toward these into their weekly schedule.

Try These Practical Exercises
Whether at the office or in an exec-ed classroom, the most important thing is to actually put productivity principles into practice. Here are two tips from Pozen’s course that you can try yourself:

Read Faster by Reading Less
“It’s possible to speed-read 2,000 words a minute, but my view is you can’t retain that,” explains Pozen. “You can structure your reading to concentrate only on the most important things.”

Make Tentative Conclusions Before Big Decisions
“If you spend two months researching an issue before making a decision, you’ll waste time gathering irrelevant facts and may miss critical issues. Start ruling out options after just two days and keep making tentative conclusions to focus your research and make better decisions faster.”

So, has this productivity guru mastered all his own techniques for himself? “I advise people to just look at email once an hour, and skip over stuff that isn’t important,” Pozen admits, “but I sometimes find myself checking mail every 15 minutes or half hour—even though I know it’s not the right thing to do!”

Laura Montgomery is an independent higher-education consultant.

The Executive Education Navigator is a first-of-its-kind search and discovery tool launched by The Economist Careers Network to aid executives’ search for their ideal executive education programs. Its blog includes posts on career hacks and industry trends.

Browse executive courses on personal productivity. For a quick introduction to productivity techniques, consider a Mediabistro online course on project management.

Topics:

Be Inspired, Productivity

Networking

How Social Media Can Help — or Hurt — Your Job Search

Learn why social media matters, and how to make the most of it, using #MBJobChat

By Mediabistro

The Mediabistro editorial team draws on 25 years of media industry expertise to cover jobs, careers, and trends shaping the industry.

1 min read • Originally published April 7, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

By Mediabistro

The Mediabistro editorial team draws on 25 years of media industry expertise to cover jobs, careers, and trends shaping the industry.

1 min read • Originally published April 7, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

Some 93 percent of recruiters review a candidate’s social media profiles before making a hiring decision. Can your online presence stand up to the scrutiny? We’ll help you get there when we team up with the in-house recruiters of @CNNCareers on Thursday, April 14 at 2 p.m. ET to host our very first Twitter chat!

Join us for the hour as we chat with CNN Recruiters and job seekers like you to discuss what recruiters search for on social media profiles, what digital skills hiring managers are looking for, how you can best present your digital skills to recruiters, how to use digital platforms to score your next media job and more.

Who: @Mediabistro, @CNNCareers and YOU

What: #MBJobChat

Where: twitter.com/Mediabistro

When: Thursday, April 14 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT

Special Bonus for Our Favorite Q&As
Mediabistro is coming to Instagram in May! If we retweet your awesome answers or questions during the chat, we’ll give you early access to our Instagram account so you can get in on the fun before everyone else.

Topics:

Climb the Ladder, Networking

Job Search

How to Optimize Your Social Profiles to Attract Job Offers

The #WeekendJobSearch Assignment #3: Update your LinkedIn, give everything else a good scrub

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

2 min read • Originally published April 8, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

2 min read • Originally published April 8, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

Congrats! You’ve made it to week 3 of the #WeekendJobSearch, our ongoing series that breaks the whole job-search process into 13 totally doable to-do items.

Last week, we set you up for job-search success with a goal and way to track your progress. (If you’re just jumping in now, check out week 1, when we started small and purged old job-search materials.)

This week, we’re focusing on cleaning up and optimizing your social presence to make them as professional and attractive as possible. This means making sure your online presence attracts and impresses hiring managers, and does absolutely nothing to scare them away.

The #WeekendJobSearch Assignment #3

Clean Up Your Social Media Presence

1. Refine Your LinkedIn Headline
To grab a hiring manager’s attention on LinkedIn, reel them in with your headline that:

Is specific to your profession
Includes your focus within the industry
Has a little personality

Let’s say your previous headline was “Content Marketing Manager.” A good refinement: “Content Marketing Manager Specializing in Launching Digital Campaigns. Frequent Tech Marketing Conference Panelist.”

If you’re unemployed, keep your desired position in the headline so you don’t get passed up by recruiters. So rather than “Currently seeking marketing opportunities,” consider “Content Marketing Manager Seeking New Opportunities.”

2. Update Your LinkedIn Summary
The goal for your summary is to engage a recruiter or hiring manager with your experience, passion for the industry and your personality. (Need inspiration? Check out these stunningly good LinkedIn profile summaries.)

Take some time now to update and proofread your summary section. Also, research other people on LinkedIn in your profession and see what they’re doing to stand out. And don’t be afraid to ask friends or colleagues for feedback on your new summary.

3. Clean Up Your Social Channels
You know the rules here: Go through all your social channels—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—to check there’s nothing that would dissuade a hiring manager from considering you.

A quick checklist:

Wherever possible, set your settings to private.
Go through your photos and remove anything that shows you holding a drink, partying or doing anything offensive or unprofessional.
Scroll through your tweets and posts, removing anything that speaks negatively about a previous employer, about another person or is complain-y.
Take a minute to re-tweet or share something exciting going on in your industry to show you’re on the pulse of current trends. Keep up this habit!

And that’s week 3! Now on to Assignment #4, when we’ll help you discover your top companies so you can start to really hone your job search.

Start from the beginning: #WeekendJobSearch Assignment #1
Share your progress on Twitter: #WeekendJobSearch

Topics:

Get Hired, Job Search

Advice From the Pros

Dan Lyons on Leaving Journalism for a Tech Startup — and What He Learned

Dan Lyons talks to Fresh Air about going from reporting to tech

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

2 min read • Originally published April 8, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

Laid-Off Tech Journalist Joins A Start-Up, Finds It’s Part Frat, Part Cult

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

2 min read • Originally published April 8, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

After being laid off from Newsweek as a tech writer at 52—with a wife and two kids, no less—Dan Lyons took this as an opportunity to break into the field he’d been covering for years: tech start-ups.

Joining marketing software start-up Hubspot as the oldest employee at the time, Lyons quickly found the frat- and cult-like culture to be much more than he had bargained for, and he writes all about it in his brand-new memoir, Disrupted: My Misadventures In The Start-up Bubble.

Dan’s motivation for joining the tech-start-up culture was simple. He saw how media and tech were changing and wanted to get on board:

“[T]here’s a sense in the media business—and I share this sentiment—that technology is really reshaping the media business. And I kind of thought, I want to get in on that. I want to get in on how the media business is changing, how people are telling stories in new ways. And the tech guys, in many ways, are doing a better job of that. Microsoft has a thing called Microsoft Stories now that is really a phenomenal publication, and it just happens to be funded by Microsoft. So there’s that too. You realize that if you’re in the media business, technology is fundamentally what’s driving the change in that business. And so I thought it would be a way to learn that.”

Lyons spoke about his career transition this week with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. It’s compelling listening for anyone with a journalism or editorial background who has made or is contemplating making a switch into content marketing. It’s also worth checking out if you’ve ever dreamed of working in TV; Lyons is a writer on the HBO show Silicon Valley, too.

Topics:

Advice From the Pros, Be Inspired

Skills & Expertise

Essential Steps to Building a Personal Brand That Advances Your Career

Here’s how to go beyond social media to hone how the world sees you

3 min read • Originally published April 12, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

3 min read • Originally published April 12, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

Personal Brand Is More than Your Digital Presence published on The Executive Education Navigator blog.

When you think about brand identity, what most frequently comes to mind will be a company logo, overall business reputation and the products associated with a business. Yet one of the most important brands you can focus on to support your company and your career is yourself.

Ultimately, people want to do business with people. With today’s plethora of digital communication and social media platforms, it’s easier and more impactful than ever before for an individual leader to publicly define and communicate his or her personal brand. The main challenge for many leaders is defining what their personal brand is and communicating it in an authentic and consistent way.

Personal brand is more than your digital presence

“Personal brand is commonly mistaken as the direct equivalent of what your social media and digital presence is. But it goes far beyond that,” says Craig Fisher, head of employer brand at software giant CA Technologies and CEO of TalentNet LLC, a social business strategy firm. Personal brand is not just about self-promotion or being visible online, Fisher explains, “it’s identifying who you are as a leader, how you treat people, how you want to be known—in and out of the office.”

In this way, personal branding is closely connected to principles and processes of using effective storytelling to become a better leader. “For many leaders, when they really look back at their personal history, it turns out that every single thing they’ve done since high school has, in some way, led them to where they are now,” says Fisher. Crafting and communicating that story in an open and transparent way is the foundation of your personal brand.

Three tips for communicating your personal brand

Once you’ve taken the essential first step of identifying the common threads and underlying themes of your leadership career, it’s time to communicate that story. Fisher offers up three pieces of advice for anyone aiming to strengthen his or her personal brand.

1. Practice with a person you trust.

Work with someone who sees you from an outside perspective, and talk to them about yourself as if you were talking to a good friend. Note the way you speak in the first person, in a way that’s direct and less formal than you might typically use with colleagues in the workplace. Try to incorporate that style and tone into all your communications, both in person and online.

2. Pick your platform.

When you’re taking your personal brand public, you don’t have to be everywhere. Choose a medium that you feel comfortable with. If you’re a visual communicator or want to transcend language barriers, use photography—like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who uses Instagram to support businesswomen. For great writers, text-based platforms like personal blogs or Twitter might be the right place to publish.

3. Balance intimacy and privacy.

Part of creating an authentic personal brand often means giving the public a glimpse into your personal life. This can seem scary at times, but it’s possible to do both effectively and safely. Fisher suggests, for example, that you can tell a story about your family life while still protecting your privacy—by referring to your kids by numbers rather than names.

Your clear and authentic personal brand and leadership narrative will come in handy in the next time you meet with your board, recruit business partners, or go looking for a new job. The story is what people will remember, so put in the necessary effort to make it a great one.

Laura Montgomery is an independent higher-education consultant.

The Executive Education Navigator is a first-of-its-kind search and discovery tool launched by The Economist Careers Network to aid executives’ search for their ideal executive education programs. Its blog includes posts on career hacks and industry trends.

Browse executive courses on personal branding. For a quick introduction to taking charge of your personal brand consider Mediabistro’s Skills in 60: Create a Killer LinkedIn Profile.

Topics:

Climb the Ladder, Skills & Expertise

Job Search

Spring Job Search: Fresh Career Advice to Help You Get Hired

Ditch the to-do list, welcome change and up your social skills

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

3 min read • Originally published April 12, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

3 min read • Originally published April 12, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026

As spring continues to warm up, so do companies’ plans to hire. Check out new listings on our job board, and read these new career-advice articles to help you turn up the heat on your job search.

1. Reframe the way you think about failure.

Next time you fail at something, remember it’s a stepping stone to success. Everyone fails sometimes, even the most successful people. “I think our resilience is dramatically improved when we trust that often out of the biggest heartbreaks come the best things in our lives,” Arianna Huffington shared with Business Insider.

2. Job seekers can look forward to more perks and benefits, and maybe returning to former employers.

What’s in the cards for hiring in 2016? More perks and benefits, recruiting via social media and workplace flexibility, according to this forecast from Fortune.

3. Here’s how to power your job search with social media.

We’re sure you know that social is where it’s at for job searching, but you might not be taking advantage of all the tools out there to learn about companies, career arcs and trends. Get yourself up to speed with the latest tips and tricks, courtesy of this super-helpful list from Time.

4. Hey interviewees: If your question for the interviewer isn’t about the job or your performance of the job, don’t ask it.

In the interview, asking “How many sick days do I get?” will more than likely turn off the hiring manager—and that’s not all that can ruin your chances of that sweet potential gig. For a complete list of what to avoid asking come interview day, check out this Fast Company cheat sheet.

5. Toss the to-do list, carry a notebook and make it home for dinner.

Ultra-successful people are different from you and me: They’ve got their daily routines and behaviors mastered. Learn from their secrets, and use them to power your job search, with this LinkedIn article.

6. Job search stalled? Get back in gear with this career advice.

The process of applying for jobs is, unfortunately, much more involved than just turning in applications. Learn fool-proof ways to maximize your chances of getting a job offer with this tip sheet from U.S. News and World Report.

7. Leave work for an interview without being super-obvious.

It’s never easy getting off work for an interview, but Business Insider’s Ask The Insider columnist Ashley Lutz tells you how to do it without getting canned.

8. Here are the companies where millennials want to work.

Do you dream of getting an offer from Google, Netflix or Apple? You’re not alone: These are among the 10 companies at which workers ages 18 to 34 would love to land, according to YouGov.

9. Use keywords, keep your profile up to date and get ready for your video interview closeup.

Including keywords in your applications, keeping your socials current, being camera-ready for video interviews and looking for an inside connection: They’re all part of the latest techniques outlined in this New York Times article about job searching in the digital age.

10. Hey, employers: Guess who’s to blame for that interview crashing and burning?

Interviewers who go through the motions and stick to a script instead of having a human conversation can scuttle what should be a key point of contact with a candidate. Forbes career contributor Liz Ryan outlines another way to interview potential hires.

Topics:

Get Hired, Job Search

Interview Tips

4 Types of Words That Make You Sound Less Professional

Improve your professional vocab simply by banning these phrases from your interviews

Marisa J. Carroll is a copy editor, writer, and grammar instructor based in New York

4 min read • Originally published April 13, 2016 / Updated March 19, 2026