Perfecting your spelling and grammar on your Care.com profile can be an easy and quick way to show potential employers your professionalism. Invest time into ensuring that your profile is a great reflection of you. Cut out careless mistakes with grammar and spelling and you will show a great attention to detail that every employer looks for.
Before you submit an application, write a profile, or send a message to a potential employer, check all of your communications using this list. Did you:
1. Proofread?
Read your profile from beginning to end and then backwards, from end to beginning. This will help you catch any mistakes your brain “compensates” for by skipping over them.
2. Use the Correct Spellings?
Use correct spellings and make use of an online dictionary.
3. Use Proper Grammar?
Spellcheck can help with this, but it’s not a perfect tool. Read it out loud to make sure everything sounds right. Your ear can be your best tool.
4. Use Correct Punctuation?
Using lots of exclamation marks looks childish — stick to no more than one or two per message. Make sure you use question marks when you ask a question and full stops at the end of each sentence. Don’t use “&” when you mean “and”.
5. Capitalise Correctly?
Make sure proper nouns and the first word of each sentence are capitalised. Never write in all caps or all lowercase — it looks unprofessional.
6. Use Complete Sentences?
Avoid long or incomplete sentences. Employers don’t like to see bullet points – it can look like a shopping list. Take the time to write your thoughts into complete sentences that relate to the job you’re applying for.
7. Use the Right Numbers?
Spell out numerals at the beginning of sentences (e.g. Eleven years ago, I…). After that, spell out one through to nine and use numbers for 10 or above and whenever you’re talking about ages of people or animals (e.g. 2-year-old-girl).
8. Add the Right Spaces?
What you put between the words is also important. Make sure you use one space between sentences. Having no spaces or too many can make your message hard to read.
9. Avoid Abbreviations Like LOL?
Using any types of abbreviations or shorthand in your material can make you sound unprofessional. This is a job application, not a text message. Take the time to say “thank you” instead of “TY” and “tonight” instead of “2nite”.
10. Pay Attention to Subject-Verb Agreement?
If the subject of your sentence is singular, the verb should be singular as well. And plural subjects should be paired with plural verbs. Otherwise you have incorrect sentences such as: “The children I care for is great.”
11. Use the Same Tense Throughout?
If you’re speaking about past experience, use past tense; don’t jump back and forth.
12. Check Your Apostrophes?
If the word is possessive, be sure it has an apostrophe. As a general rule, singular possessives end in an apostrophe, while plural possessives end in s then an apostrophe: child’s toys, dog’s bowl, kids’ toy room.
13. Use the Right Form of Their, They’re, There?
Their is a possessive pronoun; they’re is a contraction meaning they are; there denotes a direction.
14. Use the Right “Its”?
“Its,” no apostrophe, is possessive. “It’s” is a contraction meaning “it is.”
15. Use Contractions Correctly?
The most common grammatical mistakes involve contractions. They’re means they are; you’re means you are.
16. Use the Right Form of Effect/Affect?
Effect is a noun that means “a result” and affect is a verb that means “to influence”.
17. Use the Right Then/Than?
Then refers to time (I did this, then that). Than refers to comparisons (This is better than that).
If possible, ask a friend to read through your profile as well. With a fresh look at your profile, they may catch the little things you have missed.
By putting in this extra attention and effort to perfecting your profile you will stand out to potential employers. Stick to these grammar and spelling rules in your profile and messages, and make sure your personalise each application.