Bad grammar? Bad luck in the job search

A human interest piece submitted for my internship with Key Media. I love it because of the way it captures my nerdiest tendencies :)

Recently, a joke about grammar was shared by a friend on Facebook: “‘I love cooking, my kids, and my pets’ is different than ‘I love cooking my kids and my pets.’ Use commas; don’t be a psycho.” That post elicited a laugh from me, but then I realized many of my friends with limited grammatical knowledge would fail to understand the difference between those two sentences. As a result, they are not only missing out on humor, but how to communicate effectively.

It’s no secret that the art of communication is lost on a generation that has replaced cursive with typing. It’s also no secret that the most in-demand job markets are looking for candidates with more knowledge of math and science than sentence construction. As a result, graduates are being sent out into the workplace knowing how to work effectively with numbers and clients, but they can barely construct sentences to adequately express themselves.

In a world that relies heavily on email-based communication, the applicants who can compose intelligently-worded emails to potential employers, free of basic spelling and grammatical errors, may stand a higher chance of being selected for an interview than those who carry 4.0s but don’t understand the difference between “To, two, and too.”

Unless your chosen profession does not involve written communication, all serious job applicants would benefit from a basic crash-course on grammar. It may seem elementary, but it beats the alternative of having people thinking you’re a cannibal.