Did you know that how you present yourself in writing, as well as what you write about, affects your image? If your writing is riddled with typos, misspellings, bad grammar, incorrect word usage, etc. then the image you portray of yourself is less than professional. If you want to be taken seriously by those who read what you write, then you want to write without obvious errors.

Is Proofreading is Out of Style?

It’s not hard to write like a professional. All it takes is a little proofreading. The problem is that, thanks to technology, proofreading is out of style. Before everyone had a computer, most writing was proofread by a secretary, administrative assistant or a publishing house’s proofreader or editor. You didn’t need to proofread what you wrote because a secretary, administrative assistant, etc. would proof it for you. They also made the necessary corrections. Your grammar’s not up to par? No problem; the secretary will fix it. Don’t know your “to” from your “too”? No problem, the secretary does, and she’ll fix that for you too. Mistakes in grammar, incorrect word usage, spelling errors, typos and incorrect capitalization and punctuation were caught by the secretary, administrative assistant, etc.

Typos, Misspellings & Incorrect Word Usage, Oh My!

With the advent of the computer, word processing programs and spell checking software, everyone can write and self-publish a book, a blog, an ebook or whitepaper or just comment on someone else’s blog. Unfortunately, many of these writings are so riddled with typos, misspellings, incorrect word usages, etc. that one begins to despair about the quality of education our citizens are receiving.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a grammarian, but I do take the extra steps necessary to eliminate obvious mistakes.

Technology is the Culprit

After chewing on the subject for a while, it began to dawn on me that the problem wasn’t that people are uneducated and/or illiterate; the problem was that people were relying on technology to correct their mistakes. Instead of proofreading their writing before publishing/submitting/posting, they were running them through a spell checker and assuming that the spell checker would find everything that’s wrong. As any professional virtual assistant (VA) can tell you, that’s not so. (Sorry, but I had to slip that in there; it’s an important keyword for me.) LOL!

Spell Checkers Alone Won’t Cut It

A spell checker doesn’t know the difference between to, too and two; their, there and they’re; here and hear; your and you’re; whose and who’s; and a rash of other commonly misused words. Spell checkers won’t find grammatical errors unless you tell (set) it to find grammatical errors.

Tips for Professional Writing

So that your writing always portrays you well, here are some writing tips that will help you look like a professional in everything you write.

• If English isn’t your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, hire someone to proofread everything you write.
• If English is your native language and you’re writing for an English-speaking audience, proofread or hire someone to proofread everything you write.
• Don’t just rely on spell checking programs; spelling checkers don’t find instances of incorrect word usage. They don’t find all misspellings, and they don’t find all typos. Proofread as well as spell check.
• Set your spell checking program to check grammar too.
• If you’re going to blog, write articles, write ebooks, whitepapers or reports, invest in grammar checking software.
• After you’ve spell checked, grammar checked and proofread, put your writing aside for ten minutes, and go do something else.
• After the ten minutes is over, go back to your writing and proofread it one more time, or ask someone else to proofread it for you.

Now you’ve done everything (short of hiring someone to do your writing for you) in your power to make sure your writing portrays you as a professional and not a hobbyist.

Do you recruit candidates for employment for a living? Do you have boxes, or worse yet piles, of candidate resumes sitting around? There must be a better way, right? Have you considered creating a database to store candidate information? The advantages of a candidate database are enormous:

• The ability to categorize candidates by job title, ranking, salary requirements, etc.
• The ability to get a listing of candidates that fit specific criteria vs. depending on your memory or rummaging through boxes or piles of paper.
• The ability to get rid of all those boxes or piles of resumes and put the space they were taking up to better use.

Let’s look at an example of how a candidate database will help your recruiting efforts. Imagine a client calls you to say she has an opening for an IT director. Before you had a candidate database, you would tell your client that you’d look through your files and get back to her. Now, if you’re super organized, you’ve got all those candidate resumes filed by job title. If you’re not super organized, you’ve got all those candidate resumes filed alphabetically. If you’re not organized at all, you’ve got a hodge-podge of resumes, in no particular order, scattered everywhere. If you pull an all-nighter, you might be able to get back to your client the following day with some candidate names, but chances are that you won’t be able to get back to your client with candidate names for a few days. That’s the pre-database scenario.

The post-database scenario is that you tell your client that you’ll search your files and get back to her within the hour. You go into your database and pull a list of IT director candidates sorted by A-ranked candidates, B-ranked candidates, C-ranked candidates, etc. You call your client back within the half-hour and tell her that you’ve got ten A-ranked candidates that she might like to talk to, and you offer to setup the interviews for her. Not only does your client agree to talk with the candidates, but she’s impressed that you were able to put your fingers on the information she wanted so quickly.

Don’t have the time or expertise to create a candidate database? I do. As your Human Resource Virtual Assistant (HRVA), I can create and maintain the database for you. Because I subscribe to the KISS method, your candidate database will be functional as well as simple.

In the post-database scenario, above, you email or call your HRVA and ask her for a listing of IT director candidates, which she emails to you. After your client agrees to talk to those A-ranked candidates, you email your HRVA and ask her to set up the interviews for your client. Your HRVA consults with your client to get dates and times for the interviews, and she sets up the interviews.

To find out what else an HRVA can do to help you, email me at hrva@extra-assist.com for an appointment for a FREE telephone consultation.

=>Donna Caissie, the ExtraOrdinary Assistant

As a Virtual Assistant (VA), there is a very large world of market niches open to me, and like most VAs, I struggled to determine which portion of the world I’d stake out as my niche. I explored the niches of coaching professionals, authors, marketing professionals, real estate professionals, financial planners, lawyers, startup businesses, etc., but in the end I had a “duh” moment that led me to where my heart lies — human resource consultants.

Why I hadn’t thought of supporting human resource consultants long before now is simply a matter of being so close to the forest that I couldn’t see the trees. As a matter of fact, if the trees had been any closer to me a tree limb would’ve reached out and swatted me. LOL.

Back in my corporate days, the part of my office manager jobs that I loved so much was the human resource portion. I enjoyed helping my fellow employees with their benefits questions and cutting through the red tape, advising new managers regarding hiring practices and disciplinary issues, etc. In a nutshell, helping my coworkers so that they could focus on the job at hand was a rewarding experience.

As a Human Resource Virtual Assistant (HRVA), what can I offer you, the busy human resource consultant? Not only do I offer experience in human resources, but I also offer you a virtual partner who is as interested in your success as you. When you partner with this HRVA, you not only get administrative and secretarial expertise, you also get someone:

• you can brainstorm with
• who can suggest ways to market your consultancy
• who will help you automate repetitive tasks
• who can free you from the tedious, daily admin work
• who can help you find the time to build and expand your consultancy and
• who can help you focus on what you do best — human resource consulting.

What do you think; if you could create the perfect human resource assistant, what would she do for you?