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Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

Some people aren't native speakers. Do they really need to know how to spell perfectly to work for you?

We rarely receive resumes from people who are not native speakers. It is the native speaker who make the worst spelling and grammar errors. It is so strange in this era when every computer has a spell checker and grammar checker. They aren’t perfect, but most of the errors are so egregious that they clearly aren’t even trying.

FYI Not an English native speaker

It’s a document sent to tons of people. Revised by tons of hiring managers. Can’t you spend 5 minute looking at a dictionary? If you cant be bothered to spend 5 minutes researching this for an important document, what makes me think that you will spend 5 minutes trying to be good at your job. Lack of care on your resume is lack of care on lots of other things.

Companies don't seem to treat it like an important document. I can't tell you how many times an interviewer seemed to be reading my resume for the very first time during the interview itself...

As the interviewer, in several places I've worked, I'm usually handed the resume 10 minutes before the interview along with a couple of questions my manager wants me to ask. By that point, it's gone through HR, managers, etc. You're getting hired if you can get past me and whomever I'm interviewing with.

There was even one time they forgot to give me the resume... that was probably the funniest interview ever. They got the job too.

On the flip side, I do technical interviews (I am new to it though), and I spend about half an hour preparing for an interview including going through the CV that made it to me (and making notes/preparing questions) and researching the candidate based on what I see in it (e.g following links, etc)

I do the same thing. The CV is typically made available to me a couple of days before the interview, and I usually take a look at it the day before. Obviously I can't really know how carefully it gets scanned before they decide to arrange the technical interview (which is where I step in).

If you cant be bothered to spend 5 minutes researching this for an important document, what makes me think that you will spend 5 minutes trying to be good at your job

Bullshit. There are many things person may care about and many things they may not. If this position is unrelated to professional writing, it's just irrelevant. Are you questioning their abstract ability to "care" and trying to translate spelling care to job care? Bad news, it doesn't translate (aside from the fact that ideal perfectionists can't get shit done ever; your best candidate still figures out the ideal form of his resume and is too anxious to click "publish").

Native speakers are the worst at pointing typos in my experience because they are so sure of themselves.

Literally every time I have submitted an (academic) paper at least one US reviewer had to point out I made several spelling mistakes when I actually used the British spelling (consistently) instead of the US spelling.

Sorry my man but it is called "English", I think I am allowed to spell things like they do in England.

> Native speakers are the worst at pointing typos in my experience because they are so sure of themselves.

Agree. And yet, they are still the ones that mix up "your" and "you're", "then" and "them" and "than"

Some people aren't native speakers. Do they really need to know how to spell perfectly to work for you?

Perfectly, no. But in formal communications, they need to show that they're at least making an effort to get things reasonably correct. And if it matters enough, you can always find a native-speaking friend to review your resume or cover letter for you.

(Source: been there, done that, applying for jobs in other countries).

I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to filter out a candidate that can't be bothered to spent 3 minutes and run their resume through a spell checker. It tells you something important about the candidate.

Of course, it is also reasonable to be forgiving on resume errors. It depends on the culture and team you're trying to build.

Knowing what the red wriggly lines mean is a start.

From my experience, however, it's the native English speakers who spel the worse.

Speaking of red squiggly lines in Word/MS products. Is it just me or has the grammar check gotten incredibly worse the past 2 years? It keeps complaining about odd grammar forms and suggesting I replace perfectly valid word-structures with shorter ones? The one I encounter most frequently is the suggestion to replace "in order to" with just "to", which is incredibly frustrating as they mean two different things entirely.

You'll get plenty of words flagged in a tech resume. Besides, spel chequers werk grate.

That's why gawd invented spell checkers.

Besides, I've noticed that ESL speakers make different kinds of mistakes than sloppy native speakers do.

> That's why gawd invented spell checkers.

All of the lines below have red squiggly lines under them in my browser's text area:

- Qt Quick

- Datalog

- Datomic

- TensorFlow

> I've noticed that ESL speakers make different kinds of mistakes than sloppy native speakers do.

I've never seen a non-native speaker writing "would of" or using "they're" instead of "their". On the other hand I can't count how many times I've skipped an article or used a wrong one somewhere (since my native language doesn't use them at all).

Yup. My wife learned her first word of English at 43, I've had plenty of time to see how one's mother tongue has a permanent effect on language. My interpretation of what I see:

She has internal word concepts. When the English words fit cleanly into her existing concepts it's easy. When two English words map into one word concept it's considerably harder, it took her a long time to correctly separate turn on from open (and turn off from close), but at least any given thing always goes the same way. In situations where that doesn't even work she will make frequent errors even to this day--do not trust her use of gender words.

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