In a tight job market, even minor typos can send your resume to the trash heap

Oops, I meant to write, dear sir or madame (as opposed to the madam who manages a brothel).

If I had made that mistake on my cover letter, should that disqualify me for consideration for a job? Should someone’s resume get tossed if he or she mistakenly wrote “Graphic designer seeking no-profit career’’ under career objective?

Well, it appears that in this tight job market, those tiny mistakes could leave you jobless, according to a survey by Accountemps, a staffing services firm.

In interviews with 150 senior executives from the nation’s 1,000 largest companies, 40 percent of the respondents said that just one typo on a resume would kick a job candidate out of the queue for consideration. Thirty-six percent said it would take just two mistakes before the resume was discarded.

“The way we see it, there’s so much competition out there. There’s no room for error,’’ said Natasha Melgar, branch manager of the Washington, D.C., office of the staffing firm Robert Half International. “The resume is the first opportunity to present yourself.’’

With unemployment in some areas at double digits and job postings drawing hundreds of applicants, I understand the need to weed people out. But zero-tolerance of one or two resume typos is too harsh. Certainly a resume or cover letter riddled with errors says someone was sloppy or is incompetent, but a minor mistake shouldn’t disqualify you from a job or at least an interview.

In fact, a perfect resume doesn’t guarantee that a company is getting a great job candidate. In a Robert Half survey, 72 percent of executives polled said it is common for candidates with promising resumes not to live up to expectations during an interview.

But how do you avoid getting your resume pushed to the side? Accountemps offers the following tips:

■ Find another pair of eyes. Get someone to proofread your resume.

■ Put the resume down and come back to it later with your own fresh eyes.

■ Print a copy. It’s easy to overlook errors after staring at a computer monitor for a long time.

■ Read your resume aloud.

There’s a website you should visit: www.resumania.com. Robert Half has posted resume and cover letter errors its clients have found and solicits authentic examples. Here are some resume blunders submitted to the site:

■ Education: Studied public rations.

■ Work History: Faxed documents to attorneys over sees.

■ Additional Skills: Computers and off ice machines.

“If you make errors on your application materials, the assumption is you’ll make mistakes on the job,’’ says Max Messmer, CEO of Robert Half.

Some hiring managers may see the humor in trivial typos. But do what you can to give them as little reason as possible to pass you up.

Michelle Singletary is a columnist for The Washington Post. She can be reached at singletarym@washpost.com.