Real examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors in tech resumes

Painful real‑world examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors

Let’s start with what hiring managers actually see. Here are real‑to‑life examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors that show up constantly in tech resumes:

• “Proficient in Pyhton, Javscript, and REACT.”
  Three technologies, three errors. To a recruiter, this looks like someone who copies buzzwords without real experience. It’s also a textbook example of how misspelling tools you claim to “know well” kills credibility.

• “Improved system reliabilty by 30% and reduced sever crashes.”
  The impact is impressive, but reliabilty and sever (instead of server) make the whole claim feel shaky. If you don’t notice basic spelling errors, how will you handle error messages in production?

• “Led a teem of 5 engineers to migrate monolith to microservices architecure.”
  Team → teem, architecture → architecure. This is a classic example of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors in high‑value bullets. The candidate wants to show leadership and technical depth, but the line reads like it was written in a rush.

• “Responsible for code review, testing, and ensuring bug’s are fixed before deploy.”
  Misused apostrophe (bug’s) and awkward phrasing. For a role that requires clean code and clear documentation, this kind of grammar error is a serious red flag.

• “Implemented CI/CD pipleines using Githib Actions and Jenkens.”
  CI/CD pipelines misspelled, GitHub and Jenkins both wrong. These are some of the best examples of how small spelling mistakes instantly reveal copy‑paste knowledge instead of hands‑on practice.

• “Experience with agile, scrum, kanban, and daily standups meeting’s.”
  Random capitalization, inconsistent styling, and incorrect plural (meeting’s). It suggests the candidate doesn’t notice or doesn’t care about details.

These real examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors don’t just look messy. They directly undermine the story you’re trying to tell: that you’re careful, thoughtful, and ready to work on production systems where one character can break a build.

Why spelling and grammar errors hit tech resumes especially hard

In tech, your resume is treated like a code sample. Recruiters and hiring managers may not say it out loud, but many quietly assume:

“If you’re careless with language in a one‑page document you had days to perfect, how careful will you be with a 20,000‑line codebase?”

A 2023 survey of hiring managers by Grammarly and The Harris Poll found that poor communication skills hurt promotion prospects for 93% of workers, and 89% said strong communication gives candidates a competitive edge (source). Written communication includes your resume.

In engineering, data, and product roles, written clarity is part of the job:

• Writing design docs
• Commenting code
• Filing tickets and incident reports
• Communicating with non‑technical stakeholders

So when hiring teams see repeated examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors, they don’t just see “typos.” They see risk:

• Risk of miscommunication in specs and documentation
• Risk of misreading requirements and shipping the wrong thing
• Risk of sloppy habits bleeding into testing and QA

In other words, spelling and grammar errors become a proxy signal for overall precision.

Common resume sections where errors hide: examples include summary, skills, and experience

If you’re looking for the best examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors, don’t just stare at your bullet points. Mistakes love to hide in the places you skim.

1. Summary and headline

The top third of your resume gets the most attention and, ironically, the least proofreading. Real examples include lines like:

• “Detail-orinted software engineer with 5+ years experiance in backend systems.”
  You’re literally calling yourself detail‑oriented while misspelling oriented and experience.

• “Data scientest passionate about maching learning and AI.”
  Misspelling your own title and your core interest is a brutal example of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors.

These are instant credibility killers because they appear in the first few seconds of a scan.

2. Skills section

The skills section is a gold mine of errors because candidates often paste in long lists without reading them. Typical examples include:

• Mixed capitalization: Java Script, React js, node.JS
• Wrong tool names: Kuberntes, Postgress, Dynamo DB, Typescript (inconsistent)
• Duplicates: listing Python three times under different headings

When your skills list is full of these examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors, it signals that you’re more interested in keyword stuffing than accuracy.

3. Experience bullets

Experience bullets are where you sell your impact, but they’re also where grammar goes to die. Common patterns:

• Tense chaos: “Develop features… Led migration… Fixing bugs…” all in the same role
• Subject‑verb issues: “Team of 4 engineer were responsible for…”
• Run‑on sentences: “Designed and implemented and maintained and supported…”

These examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors make your achievements harder to parse and your impact harder to trust.

4. Projects and portfolios

Side projects and GitHub links are great, but they often come with:

• Broken URLs
• Mismatched repo names and descriptions
• Awkward grammar in project summaries

For example:

“Created a web app that let’s user’s track crypto price’s and notify’s them when it’s going up or down.”

That single sentence has four separate grammar issues. If you’re applying for front‑end, full‑stack, or product‑adjacent roles, this is not the impression you want.

ATS, keywords, and how typos quietly break your resume

There’s another layer to this problem: applicant tracking systems (ATS). Many companies use ATS software to parse your resume, extract skills, and match you to job descriptions.

When your resume includes examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors in key technical terms, the system may not recognize your skills at all. For instance:

• You write “Kuberntes” instead of “Kubernetes”
  The ATS might not match you to roles requiring Kubernetes.

• You write “Javscript” instead of “JavaScript”
  Some parsers are forgiving; others are not. Either way, it looks sloppy in the structured data.

• You write “Postgress SQL” instead of “PostgreSQL”
  That can be interpreted as a completely different (or nonexistent) technology.

This is one of the best examples of hidden damage from failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors: it doesn’t just annoy humans; it can keep your resume from ever reaching them.

The U.S. Department of Labor notes that automated screening tools are increasingly used to filter applicants at scale (source). If your core skills are misspelled, you’re effectively invisible to those systems.

How repeated errors affect perception: what hiring managers actually think

Most hiring managers will forgive a single harmless typo. What they won’t ignore is a pattern.

When they see multiple examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors in a short resume, they start drawing conclusions:

• “This person rushes important work.”
  The resume looks like it was written in one sitting and never revisited.

• “They might struggle with documentation and cross‑team communication.”
  Especially dangerous for roles that require writing specs, RFCs, or client‑facing updates.

• “They don’t take this process seriously.”
  If you won’t invest an extra 20 minutes to proofread, will you invest time to test your code?

Communication skills consistently rank among the top attributes employers seek in candidates, even for technical roles. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) reports that written communication is one of the most frequently sought competencies in new hires (source).

Your resume is often the only written sample employers see before an interview. Repeated spelling and grammar errors become the best examples, in their minds, of what your day‑to‑day writing will look like.

A practical proofreading workflow for tech resumes

Avoiding these examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors is less about talent and more about process. Treat your resume like production code and run it through a mini QA cycle.

Step 1: Single‑purpose passes

Don’t try to catch everything at once. Do separate passes for:

• Spelling of technologies and tools
  Manually compare each term to the official docs or homepages (e.g., Kubernetes, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, GitHub). Open each site in a tab and check letter by letter.

• Tense and grammar
  For past roles, use past tense consistently: designed, implemented, led. For your current role, pick either present or past and stick to it.

• Formatting and consistency
  Dates, bullet styles, capitalization, spacing. Inconsistency is a subtle example of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors at the formatting level.

Step 2: Read it out loud

This feels awkward, but it works. Reading out loud forces your brain to slow down and notice:

• Missing words
• Clunky phrasing
• Run‑on sentences

If you trip over a sentence, a hiring manager probably will too.

Step 3: Change the medium

Switch context so your eyes see the text as “new”:

• Print it and mark it up with a pen
• Save as PDF and read on your phone
• Change the font temporarily to something unfamiliar

You’ll be surprised how many examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors jump out once the layout changes.

Step 4: Use tools, but don’t outsource judgment

Use spell check and grammar tools as a first pass, not the final word:

• Built‑in spelling and grammar checkers in Word or Google Docs
• Browser extensions like Grammarly for basic checks

Remember: these tools often don’t understand technical terms. They might underline Kubernetes as wrong and happily accept Kuberntes. That’s why human review of technical keywords is non‑negotiable.

Step 5: Get another human to review

Ask someone who works in tech, or at least someone with strong writing skills, to review:

• Your spelling of tools and frameworks
• Awkward or confusing bullets
• Any examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors you’ve gone “blind” to

Offer to trade reviews; you’ll both end up with cleaner resumes.

2024–2025 trends: higher volume, less time, harsher filters

The tech hiring landscape in 2024–2025 is noisy. Recruiters are often scanning hundreds of resumes per role. That reality makes your proofreading mistakes more expensive.

Some trends worth noting:

• Shorter attention windows
  Many recruiters spend under 30 seconds on an initial scan. In that time, a single line like “detail-orinted engineer” can stick out more than your best project.

• More competition from bootcamps and career switchers
  With more candidates entering tech, clean writing becomes a differentiator. When two candidates have similar technical backgrounds, the one without obvious examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors tends to feel more professional.

• AI‑assisted writing is raising expectations
  Ironically, as more people use AI tools to draft content, hiring managers expect fewer basic errors. If your resume still has glaring spelling mistakes in 2025, it signals you didn’t even run a basic check.

In a crowded market, clean language is low‑hanging fruit. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the job, but it removes an easy reason to say no.

FAQ: common questions about resume proofreading mistakes

What are some common examples of spelling errors on tech resumes?

Common examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors on tech resumes include misspelling languages and tools like JavaScript (Javscript), Kubernetes (Kuberntes), PostgreSQL (Postgress), React (REACT js), and GitHub (Githib). Candidates also frequently misspell their own titles, writing softwear engineer, data scientest, or devops engenier. These are the best examples of errors that instantly shake a recruiter’s confidence.

Can one typo really cost me an interview?

A single minor typo usually won’t sink you, especially if the rest of the resume is clean. The problem is when your resume is full of small issues: multiple misspelled technologies, inconsistent tense, and grammar errors in your summary. At that point, hiring managers see a pattern. Repeated examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors can absolutely push you below other candidates with similar skills.

What’s one example of a grammar mistake that looks especially bad for engineers?

A classic example of a grammar mistake that looks bad for engineers is mixing up verb tense and subject‑verb agreement in impact statements, such as: “Team of 4 engineer were responsible for maintain and deploy critical services.” This sentence has multiple errors in a single line. For someone claiming to maintain “critical services,” it reads as careless and unpolished.

How can I quickly check for errors before submitting my resume?

Do a fast three‑step pass:

1. Run a spell check in your editor and fix anything obvious.
2. Manually verify every technology name against official docs or sites.
3. Read the resume out loud once, focusing on your summary and top bullets.

This won’t catch everything, but it will eliminate the most obvious examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors before you hit submit.

Should I worry about American vs. British spelling on a tech resume?

For U.S. roles, stick to American spelling (color, organize, analyze). For international roles, consistency matters more than the specific variant. Mixing organize and organise on the same page is another subtle example of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors. Pick one variant and use it everywhere.

If you work with code, you already understand that details matter. Treat your resume the same way. Clean up these examples of failing to proofread for spelling and grammar errors, and you’ll remove one of the easiest reasons for a busy hiring manager to move on to the next candidate.