Your resume is your best first impression and indicates to employers among other things your attention to detail. Computers make it easy to create your resume and even easier to make typos, which don’t leave a good first impression.
A few tips will help you avoid submitting a flawed resume:
- Unless absolutely necessary, never send a resume out the same day you put it together. Sleep on your freshly written resume and then proofread it the next day. You will catch more errors this way.
- Read your resume backwards to check for mistakes. You will see them better.
- Have someone else read your resume with a red pencil checking spelling, grammar, dates, etc. Have them pay special attention to your contact information. This is one of the most common areas where jobseekers make a mistake. If the restaurant/hotel recruiter can’t contact you, you’re not going to get the job.
- Double check all technical terms – sous chef, garde manger, saucier, BOH, FOH, etc – to be sure that your word processor’s automatic correction mechanism hasn’t changed them to more standard terms like soup chef, garden manager, Bob, for, etc.
We’d like to say THANKS! to Jo Lynne Lockley of Chefs Professional Agency for contributing this tip.