What is the appropriate method of dealing with typos in a resume by Japanese standards?

8 comments

1. I have been there I would just not worry about it. Dyslexic so I always have spelling mistakes on everything. My general thing is not call attention to it. If they ask me about in an interview I am just upfront about it. Some people have weird gate keeping with it, other care more about how you can do the job.

   For lower level jobs paperwork things tend to be more important. Being easier to hire without any hiccups. For higher paying jobs you gotta sell things a little more and really depends on how you do with other stuff.

2. How major are these typos? Do they massively change the meaning of something you were trying to say?

   Where did you apply too? If it was places like Nova, Gaba, etc. it honestly will not matter.

   If it was something like a university, might be good to send a revised version but if the typos are not that noticeable might also be ok just to not say anything and hope they don’t notice.

3. If it’s eikaiwa or ALT work, they don’t care. They just want a warm body that appears to speak English.

   If you are a professional teacher looking for a real job, it’s a reflection of you.

4. Are your résumés in English, or are you talking about 履歴書? If it’s the former, it’s something that I used to use as a preliminary filter when I was doing hiring for an *eikaiwa*.

   I hired for an *eikaiwa* with a reasonable salary (¥300,000 per month starting), a couple of months paid holiday, paid training, discounted professional Japanese lessons, and other perks, so we’d get a lot of résumés.

   The preliminary check of those would involve putting aside weirdly formatted résumés (things with colored paper, weird fonts, hand written). The next step would be to look at cover letters: if there was even one spelling mistake, the résumé would be put aside, we wouldn’t even continue reading it. The final step would be to look at the information contained in the remaining résumés (*viz.,* those with no spelling mistakes) and choose a few people to interview.

   We kept the résumés with spelling mistakes for a while. If it ever got to the point where a couple of rounds of interviews didn’t yield a suitable candidate, we would have looked at the résumés with spelling mistakes, but we never got to that point.

   Although it never happened, I *guess* we might have fished out a résumé whose writer later informed us of having noticed spelling mistakes after sending the résumé and put it at the top of the ‘rejected’ pile, but it never did happen.

5. What’s done is done IMO.

   You’re applying for minimum wage roles using a scattergun approach. The lesson here is not to use the scattergun approach because you’ll end up with a disinterested CV (which reflects your valid appraisal).

   Why apply for a job that you don’t want? GO HOME!!! Find something more interesting if you don’t even want the job. I’m not being harsh… just saying… if this is the start of it then where’s it going?

6. Prewrite in pencil like most people do.

7. I hire for a private high school, so i guess it’s not the same situation however when I’m looking at CVs it’s usually quite clear when a mistake is just a typo, which of course isn’t as bad as a genuine error, but it does imply (as you’ve admitted to doing already) that the applicant didn’t take the time to review it before applying, which does not bode well for them overall.

   It’s possible that an eikaiwa wouldn’t be as stringent, also you’re already living here with a visa which are huge plus points!

   In all honestly if it were me I’d resend it with an apology / explanation. People have done that when applying to my school and I’ve always appreciated it. Best of luck with your job hunt!

8. It is what it is. If you get an interview with them and they mention it, make sure you have a corrected resume with you. Otherwise don’t draw attention to it.

   Just be more careful in the future