Carms - personal statement and jeopardizing interview

[Guest Paregorics2]

Can a couple of grammatical mistakes (obvious cut and paste mishap) and mention of a significant other in a personal statement jeopardize chances for an interview in a surgical specialty?

[Guest marbledust]

Cut and paste/spelling/grammar mistakes are not going to help you. I don't know if programs do this, but when I was on a hiring committee and going through resumes, the ones with mistakes like that were usually tossed out at the beginning. If you have 10 people with fairly similar credentials and 2 can't be bothered to spell-check and edit, who do you think is the first into the garbage can? It's bad for the person who sent in the resume, but great for those who have to par down the applicants. Sounds kinda mean, I admit. But......

 

I am not sure why mentioning a significant .other is something you are concerned about. Unless, of course, it is something not suitable (ie really crazy) or not applicable to your personal statement.

 

I hope it works out okay for you.

[Guest marbledust]

I just noticed you posted this question twice. Next time, please just post it once. If it is in the wrong forum, one of the moderators will move it to the proper one. Thanks.

[Guest Paregorics2]

Sorry marbledust.

 

You were on a hiring committee for a healthcare program?

[Guest marbledust]

No....but I was involved with hiring staff for two different departments at a post-secondary institute. In one case the hiring committee was 3 people, in the other it was 4. Everybody went through the resumes individually to short-list and almost universally, those with spelling mistakes and grammar errors were thrown out. Like I said, it wasn't fair perhaps. But we needed to do an initial cut and the thinking was, on the part of almost everybody involved, that the person didn't care enough to proof-read, or have somebody else proof-read, his or her resume. With a pool of good, fairly equal applicants, something like that did make or break it for interviews.

 

I don't know if residency committees think this way....but I wouldn't be surprised.