The most common spelling mistakes made on resumes — and how to avoid them

Spelling mistakes are easy to make on a resume, but they can ruin a first impression with a potential employer.

The overwhelming majority of job applicants make these simple slip-ups. An analysis of 20,000 U.K. resumes in 2019 by jobs site Adzuna found more than 90% of them had spelling or grammar mistakes. The same survey also found that men tended to make more mistakes than women, with 8% of female job hunters sending in a flawless resume compared to just 6% of men.

One of best ways to prevent future blunders is to know the most common mistakes, particularly since there is very little time to make a good impression.

A survey of 2,000 U.K. adults published in March by Samsung KX found that employers typically take just 28.7 seconds to assess a resume, despite the fact it takes Britons an average of nearly six years to feel they’ve perfected it.

Emma Alkirwi, managing director of resume writing service The CV Guru, told CNBC via telephone that jobseekers shouldn’t rely on spell-check to avoid basic mistakes “because it’s not always going to pick out everything, even though you think it should.”

For example, Alkirwi said it was common to see typos turning the word “and” into “add,” which spell-check might not pick up on. “Manager” becoming “manger” was another typical typo that she said might not be caught by spell check functions.

Misusing certain words was another way mistakes frequently arose, Alkirwi said. Mistaking “insure” for “ensure” was a common example, she said, as well as “affect” and “effect.”