Quick question....

[conuly]

How bad of a faux pas is it if you're filling out a job application in person and then realize after you hand it in that you've gone ahead and proofread it?

(Asking for a friend!)

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Comments

[magid]

I’ve proofread paperwork when applying, but then, I was applying for editing jobs….

[cactuswatcher]

Personally, I don't think them seeing that you are careful about your work is at all bad. If most people were perfect, it might be a different story.

[rebeccmeister]

Do you mean, you filled it out, then read back through it carefully? I mean, that seems like behavior from a person who is careful, which seems like generally a good thing?

[conuly]

No, I mean I fixed their spelling and punctuation errors.

[rebeccmeister]

Ohhhhhhh, hahahaha, well, I mean, that gives them an accurate sense of how you would act as an employee, so perhaps it's for the best?

[profiterole_reads]

It depends on what job you're applying for. Personally, I would give you an extra point for it, but other people might dislike it.

[cellio]

For me that would be a bonus, but I guess it depends on what the job is and how it was presented?

At a past job when we were interviewing candidates for a tech-writing position to write software documentation, I developed a small exercise for candidates to do in the interview. (I mean, candidates for programming positions wrote code on whiteboards, so this wasn't out of line.) I gave candidates a software interface specification (the sort of thing you would get from a programmer) and its documentation, and asked what they would change. There were some blatant problems (like typos), some more subtle problems (that's not the spec says), several omissions (the spec doesn't say but the user would need to know), and one problem in the spec itself. I expected people to handle the typos and the errors, would have been happy if candidates asked about any of the omissions, and was very pleasantly surprised when a candidate spotted the deeper problem and asked "why did the programmer do that instead of (other thing)?". We hired that one. :-)

The errors in their application probably weren't intentional, but if it's for an editing job, that would be clever!

[watervole]

Now that sounds like a great exercise!