The penalty grows when errors become a pattern
The two-error penalty was about the same across applicants, jobs, and recruiters. The five-error penalty varied: it was larger among recruiters who care more about language, and smaller for jobs that require more education and for applicants who listed volunteer work. A larger penalty for jobs with heavy writing demands was borderline.1
Recruiters also rated applicants with repeated errors lower on interpersonal skills, conscientiousness, and mental ability.1
Errors also changed impressions of the applicant.
Recruiters rated three areas lower with two or five spelling errors.
| Perception | What recruiters were asked to judge |
|---|---|
| Interpersonal skills | Communication and working with others |
| Conscientiousness | Care, organization, and responsibility |
| Mental abilities | Learning, problem-solving, and knowledge |
What this does and does not justify
It justifies a careful spelling pass. It does not justify pretending one typo always ends the process, extending a Dutch-language result from Belgium to every language or labor market, or treating error-free writing as proof of job performance.1 It also can't say whether spelling matters more than content: the study kept the content the same and changed only the spelling. What it shows is that repeated errors cost points even when the experience on the page is identical. It fits what a much larger experiment found when only the wording changed: grammar fixes on short freelance profiles lifted hires from 3.1% to 3.3%.
What to fix first
Our advice: the study tested spelling only, and the section a recruiter weighs is Experience: in the strongest eye-tracking study, recruiters who spent longer on Experience were more likely to move a resume forward. Fix what that section says, then run these checks.
- Spelling and grammar consistency.
- Date alignment and spacing.
- Repeated tense shifts inside a single role.
- Punctuation, read in the final file.