7 Ways You’re Scaring Off Recruiters and How to Fix the Mistakes

Job searching is like dating: each side involved is trying to find the perfect fit. You’re sizing up an employer to see if they’ve got what it takes to make you happy. The employer is evaluating whether you can make their dreams come true as a productive, successful team member.

However, much like dating, there are some behaviors that can be a turn-off. No, we’re not talking about things like mansplaining at the dinner table or endlessly sharing stories about an ex. Instead, we’re talking about ways that you may — knowingly or unknowingly — be discouraging recruiters from giving you an interview or even that coveted offer letter.

Here are seven ways you may be scaring off recruiters and hiring managers. Job seekers, beware.

1 Unfocused resume and social media profiles

It’s great that you have three certifications, loads of hobbies, and the ability to multitask like the best of them. However, when you are applying for a role, it’s vital that your resume and LinkedIn profile clearly tell a compelling narrative about why you are the ideal candidate for the job. This is why some experts recommend having more than one resume. Your resume should clearly convey why you are a good fit for the specific role, as opposed to being a catch-all document for all of the jobs you’ve worked in your life. Similarly, your LinkedIn profile should mirror your resume and expound on some of the details, including projects you’ve worked on, articles you’ve been featured in, professional organizations you are a member of, etc. Recruiters, on average, take six to seven seconds to read a resume. If yours is a mash-up of your greatest hits, they won’t know what to take away from it. In the end, an unfocused resume may be the reason recruiters aren’t calling you back.

Here’s a tip:  Grammarly runs on powerful algorithms developed by the world’s leading linguists, and it can save you from misspellings, hundreds of types of grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and words that are spelled right but used in the wrong context. Learn More 

READ: 9 Mistakes to Avoid on Social Media While Looking for a New Job

2 Excessive numbers of applications

While you may be uber passionate to work at a particular company, resist the urge to apply to every open role that you might qualify for. Seeing your name and application pop up for four or five job listings sends a clear message to recruiters: You don’t know what you want, or you’re not decisive. If there are a handful of roles that, initially, you think you’d be a good fit for, print our the job descriptions and really read them. Compare them with one another. Notice the differences, and then start prioritizing which ones are a better fit given your skills, experience, and education.

Don’t be that person whose name pops up in an inbox multiple times, like an email stalker. Home in on one or two roles that you feel strongly about and apply to those.

3 Overeager emails, calls, and follow-ups

You’ve applied to a position. You’re feeling good, but then . . . nothing. Silence. A couple of weeks go by and you haven’t heard back from a recruiter. If you’ve found yourself in the job search black hole, it’s okay to follow up with a professional email. However, if you have emailed twice, called three times, and left a Facebook message for the recruiter, you’ve gone too far. You are scaring him/her. Hell, you’re scaring us. Begging for a response doesn’t make you look like the professional, informed candidate that a company would want to hire. It’s safe to say that if you haven’t heard from an employer after three weeks and a follow-up email, you should move on to the next opportunity.

READ: How to Write a Follow-up Email After a Job Interview

4 Repeatedly rescheduling calls, interviews, and meetings

Recruiters get it. Schedules get busy and calendar conflicts arise. However, if you’ve rescheduled a phone interview, in-person interview, or follow-up call, be cautious about continuing to reschedule. Most talent acquisition pros are juggling multiple requisitions and dozens of applicants. You’re making their job harder by constantly rescheduling, and what’s worse is that you’re giving yourself a bad reputation. Be punctual and reliable.

5 Incomplete or incorrect information

In the same vein, you may be scaring off recruiters with your incomplete application or incorrect information. As an informed candidate, you should not only be highly engaged and well-informed but also make a recruiter’s job easier by giving them the right information. That means full and complete information for your references, a fully filled out application, and an easily accessible portfolio or work samples. Ideally, you want to make a recruiter’s interactions with you as pleasant and seamless as possible so that hiring you is an even bigger delight.

READ: What Are the Best Ways to Show Your Skills to an Employer?

6 Bashing former employers on social media

Airing a former employer’s dirty laundry or badmouthing former colleagues is one of the quickest ways to scare off potential employers. After all, who wants to hire someone who has a track record of bashing? When critiquing former employers or colleagues on social media or even when you leave an anonymous Glassdoor review, always be fair and professional. Whether your name is attached to it or not, it’s important that recruiters see that no matter what may have transpired between you and a previous employer, you still know how to handle yourself with grace and class.

7 Inconsistent interview performance

Lastly, inconsistent interactions with team members of your potential employer can put off a recruiter, or at the very least make them question your fit for the role. Being inconsistent in interviews, phone calls, or work samples can send the signal that you’ll be an inconsistent employee, which is not what you want a recruiter or hiring manager to think about you. And while this final behavior may not scare off recruiters quite like the aforementioned actions, it’s important to remember that you must consistently perform during the application process with everyone you come into contact with so that they have a clear impression of the kind of informed candidate you are.

A version of this post originally appeared on Glassdoor’s blog.

More from Glassdoor:

The Ultimate Guide to Analyzing a Company’s Glassdoor Page

10 Smart Ways to Improve Your Chances for a Raise

8 Honest Reasons You Didn’t Make It Past the First Interview

How Reading Affects Your Brain

As you read these words, your brain is decoding a series of abstract symbols and synthesizing the results into complex ideas. It’s an amazing process. The English writer Katie Oldham described the “surreal” act of reading a book this way: “You stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.”

And as if it weren’t already strange enough, consider this: If you do enough of it—that is, read a lot—it may not only rewire parts of your brain, but perhaps even make you a nicer person. (Maybe. More on that below.)

While the brain remains a massive and often murky frontier for scientific research, we’re devoted fans of the written word—and we’re always keen to learn more about the neurological effects of one of our favorite pastimes.

A recent adaptation

The act of reading hinges upon not one part of the brain but the interactions among several, which have to do with recognizing symbols, relating them to sounds and spoken language, and ultimately extracting meaning. That’s because, from an evolutionary standpoint, reading and the human brain are relatively new acquaintances. (In fact, the extent to which language—written or not—is a built-in function of the brain has itself been a subject of ongoing debate.)

To frame this another way, “We were never born to read.” So begins Maryanne Wolf in her book Proust and the Squid:

Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species. . . . Our ancestors’ invention could come about only because of the human brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be reshaped by experience.

—Maryanne Wolf

(Wolf has also noted that because the act of reading integrates other functions that have to do with your sense of place, as well as touch, diminishing those senses—as reading on a screen instead of a page often does—can make long reads tougher to navigate and harder to remember afterward.)

Just as the brain can learn to take on the multifarious requirements of processing language from symbols—thanks to a property called neuroplasticity—it seems apt to retain the effects of doing so, as well.

For instance, researchers at Emory University found that reading a novel heightens connections in the parts of the brain that deal with language reception. The study’s lead author, neuroscientist Gregory Berns, says it also taps into a process known as grounded cognition, by which reading about an action such as swimming activates neurons that are associated with that act, even while you’re sitting still:

The neural changes that we found associated with physical sensation and movement systems suggest that reading a novel can transport you into the body of the protagonist. . . . We already knew that good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense. Now we’re seeing that something may also be happening biologically.

—Gregory Berns

Berns says it’s worth noting these effects aren’t limited to the moments while you’re reading; rather, they’ve been detected via brain scans several days after the fact. Even if a book doesn’t change your life, it might change your week.

Enhancing empathy?

That transportive property by which fiction can project readers into other people’s lives may also help us better relate in real life. Such was the finding of a 2013 study at The New School in New York, which found this benefit specific to the readers of literary fiction: They seem to excel at tests that involved understanding other people’s feelings.

That result did not hold for the readers of nonfiction or genre fiction, by the way. But before you toss out your beach reads and histories in order to focus on the complete works of Chekhov, you might want to be wary of headlines that overhype the conclusion—e.g., “‘Mind-Reading’ Skills Boosted By Reading Literature, Study Suggests.” The brain is monstrously complicated; we still have much to learn of its machinations.

Still, the suggestion seems to get some credence from more recent work by Keith Oatley, a University of Toronto cognitive psychologist who also happens to be a novelist. Fiction, Oatley says, is akin to a flight simulator—a kind of life simulation that allows us to gain experience without, you know, crashing and burning.

When we read about other people, we can imagine ourselves into their position and we can imagine it’s like being that person. . . . That enables us to better understand people, better cooperate with them.

—Keith Oatley, cognitive psychologist

There are skeptics, however, who worry such interpretations risk unduly narrowing the benefits of an activity we ultimately do for pleasure. Rather than “literature as PX90 workout for the soul,” book columnist Mark O’Connell argues, “I wouldn’t want to be without those books or my having read them, and . . . their importance to me is mostly unrelated to any power they might have to make me a more considerate person.”

Reading may just help your brain chill

Whether it ultimately makes you a better person or just a happier one, there is research suggesting the out-of-body experience that comes with a good book might be the empirically best form of relaxation. That’s from the work of David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist at the University of Sussex:

This is more than merely a distraction, but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness.

—David Lewis

That also seems to hold true even if you’re not inclined to tangle with the likes of Tolstoy while trying to de-stress: “It really doesn’t matter what book you read,” Lewis says, so long as it’s “thoroughly engrossing.”

Whether you read to soak in brilliant writerly techniques for your own next draft, or simply because it’s too loud on the train to enjoy podcasts—and whether you prefer leather-bound first editions or the alluring glow and convenience of a smart phone—Grammarly is glad to be part of the way you enjoy words.

12 Aquatic Collective Nouns That Will Make Your Heart Squee

You know what to call a group of cows or sheep, but do you know the names for groups of animals in the ocean? Why neglect your friends under the sea? Learn which animals congregate in a cast today!

Army of Herring

Attention! Most fish swim in schools, but herring swim in armies.

Bed of Oysters

Buried in the sand of the ocean floor or on the beach, you can find a bed of oysters. Clams, too, are found in beds. Is that why they are so famously happy?

Cast of Crabs

A cast sometimes refers to the actors who work on a television show. At the beach, the only cast you are likely to see is a cast of crabs.

Couples and Pairs of Octopuses

According to one commenter on Yahoo Answers, when it comes to octopuses, “two is company, and three’s a crowd.” Octopuses tend to go solo unless they pair up to mate.

Gam of Whales

Gam is an archaic word for a social party. Its origin is unknown, but it may come from a nautical term referring to a meeting of whaling ships at sea for the crews to exchange news. Is that why whales, being the social creatures they are, are sometimes called a gam when they meet up together?

Herd or School of Seahorses

People who keep aquariums may have several seahorses, which they might call herds or schools. However, because seahorses don’t really hang out together in the wild, they don’t have an official group name.

Pod of Dolphins

Most people remember that dolphins swim in pods. According to Dolphins-World.com, if food is abundant in an area, several pods of dolphins join together to form a super pod. Pod may also refer to groups of whales or seals.

Raft of Sea Otters

Most rafts are made of wood, but it you see a furry one, it may be made up of a group of sea otters. They like to float on their backs as they chow down on tasty mussels and abalone.

Smack or Bloom of Jellyfish

A group of jellyfish is called a smack. Ocean currents determine where jellyfish drift, so if there is a strong breeze, thousands of jellyfish may be blown into the same area. That huge group is a bloom.

Shiver of Sharks

A group of sharks is a shiver, and that’s what you might do if you see one of them swimming near you. But don’t worry, they prefer to eat other sea creatures. If a group of them eats together, it’s a frenzy.

Swarm of Krill

What about the little guys? A group of krill is called a swarm. Just in case you’re wondering, krill are the shrimp-like crustaceans that whales love to eat.

Walk of Sea Snails

Not every sea creature swims. Some of them prefer to promenade with their friends. Sea snails move pretty slowly, which is why we call groups of them walks.

How many of these did you know? It’s cool to learn about animal collective nouns, isn’t it? Why not learn about the names for adorable baby animals next?

10 Words You Need to Know for the GRE

Whether you’re studying for the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations test) or just want to improve your vocabulary, these are ten words you should learn how to use right now.

Replete: filled or well-supplied with something. Our cupboard is replete with canned soup.

Harbinger: A person or thing that foreshadows or foretells the coming of someone or something. Some people believe that crows are harbingers of death.

Obdurate: Stubbornly persistent, generally in wrongdoing; refusing to reform or repent. She grew increasingly obdurate during her high school years.

Reprieve: To cancel or postpone the punishment of someone, especially an execution; the cancellation or postponement of a punishment. He had resigned himself to his fate but was granted a reprieve at the last minute.

Obfuscate: render obscure, unclear, or unintelligible; to bewilder someone. Sometimes it’s helpful to abbreviate long words. Other times, the abbreviations obfuscate the meanings of the words.

Crepuscular: of, resembling, or relating to twilight. A crepuscular light filled the ballroom, creating an atmosphere of hushed anticipation.

Temper (verb): To moderate or control; to strengthen or toughen a material, especially metal, by heat treatment. He tempered his feelings in order to give a civil reply. After the fire had been extinguished, they discovered that the heat had tempered the metal beams.

Plumage: Feathers, either covering a bird or used ornamentally; finery or elaborate dress. The bird’s plumage was exquisite: red, yellow, and orange feathers that shone like the rays of the sun.

Bolster: To brace, reinforce, secure, or support. She bolstered the team’s mood with a short pep during the break.

Epicure: A person who takes particular pleasure in fine food and drink. He is an avid epicure and tries to go to the opening of every new restaurant in town.

Do you have tips for learning new vocabulary words? Share them in the comments!

6 Plagiarism Gaffes That Will Make You Gasp

With the revelation of Melania Trump’s alleged plagiarism of a 2008 Michelle Obama speech, plagiarism is suddenly front-page news. Although this may be the most talked-about instance of plagiarism at the moment, it’s far from the first. Plagiarism has existed as long as intellectual property has, and there have been numerous public figures accused of this academic transgression, including the United States’ current president and vice president.

Although some instances of plagiarism involve more text than others, many result in some sort of legal action, or at least an in-depth apology to the plagiarized party. Plagiarism is, after all, an error that many find not only incorrect, but dishonest. Here are some of the worst instances of plagiarism in music, political, and media history.

1. The First Recorded Instance of Plagiarism

We don’t know the name of the first plagiarist, but we do know the first poet to be plagiarized. According to PlagiarismToday, his name was Martial, and he became one of the best-known poets of the first century AD. He accused several other poets of copying and distributing his work without his permission, which was a common practice in the era. Instead of sitting idly by and allowing these plagiarists to steal his work, Martial wrote several scathing verses about their practices and characters, beating them down with his words. He effectively coined the word “plagiarism” in one of these verses, using the Latin word for kidnapping (“plagiarus”) to describe the act of stealing another poet’s work.

2. Political Plagiarism Hops the Pond

Of course, any discussion of famous plagiarism cases would be incomplete without mentioning Vice President Joe Biden’s famous slip up in 1987. The then-senator alleged that the plagiarized words “came to him” on the way to his Iowa State Fair speech. But after Maureen Dowd compared his speech line-for-line with a speech by UK Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock in The New York Times, it was widely accepted that his remarks were lifted from Kinnock’s work.

Biden’s response to the situation showed significant remorse for emulating the popular UK politician. He reportedly responded with a simple “All I had to say was ‘Like Kinnock.’” Biden also reportedly visited Kinnock in 1988, presenting him with a bound copy of his speeches and encouraging him to “use them whenever he liked.”

3. Turn A-Dowd Is Fair Play

Although Maureen Dowd was instrumental in discovering the similarities between Biden and Kinnock’s speeches, she also became the subject of a plagiarism scandal of her own. According to The Guardian, Dowd was accused of borrowing a paragraph in a 2009 column from Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall. Dowd responded to the accusation by saying that she got the paragraph from a friend and recognized later that her friend was probably quoting Talking Points Memo. Unfortunately, friendly fire did not save Dowd from considerable professional anguish over the thought of plagiarizing another prominent political columnist.

4. Viva la Sampling

Literature and music both have a long history of borrowing and stealing that isn’t, strictly speaking, plagiarism. For example, the ethics of sampling in hip hop have long been debated, with some deeming samples polite nods to prior artists and others declaring them instances of blatant melodic thefts. However, when an artist “writes” a song that borrows a major melody from another artist’s song, accusations of plagiarism will fly. Coldplay was recently the recipient of these accusations, when Joe Satriani alleged that their song “Viva La Vida” borrowed significantly from the guitar parts on his “If I Could Fly.” The two groups settled the resulting lawsuit out of court, and Coldplay never admitted wrongdoing, but Satriani fans insisted that the group had plagiarized.

5. Less Journalism, More Fiction

Although Maureen Dowd’s brush with plagiarism is notorious, one name has become synonymous with questionable ethics in the journalism world—Jayson Blair. The then 27-year-old New York Times reporter committed multiple instances of what the paper called “journalistic fraud,” including fabricating quotes, scenes, and entire stories from the field. His plagiarized facts and passages mostly came from other publications and wire services, but Blair pretended they were his own reporting and writing. As “one of the most brazen fabulists in the history of journalism,” according to one Washington Post reporter, Blair’s legacy lives on in a chilling documentary about the numerous failings that led to his fabricated reports.

6. Putin on a Show

Even world leaders aren’t immune to the allure of plagiarism. According to a study by the Brookings Institute, Russian President Vladimir Putin plagiarized large portions of the thesis that resulted in a degree described on his website as a “PhD in economics.” Although the degree title itself has been debated, the content of his thesis, “Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations,” has been shown to borrow liberally from a 1978 textbook on the same topic. Brookings researchers found “evidence of extensive plagiarism” in the thesis, which they further alleged that Putin did not write himself.

6 Cool Ways to Overcome Writer’s Block

Want to write a bestselling novel? Or maybe you’re more the screenplay type who wants to go straight to Hollywood. Whatever your writing goals are, sometimes the biggest obstacle between them and you is a nasty case of writer’s block. How can you free up your creative juices and write a story worth telling? Here are some ideas to get you started.

Go Wild for Words

Stephen King holds thesauruses (thesauri for you prescriptive Latin-lovers) in disdain, but don’t be afraid to rebel against his viewpoint. Learning new and archaic words can help you think from a different angle; those new words can serve as the seed for your story.

One way to approach this is to find a word you like and write it in the center of a piece of paper. Use word association to create an entire web on that paper; you might be pleasantly surprised at where your thoughts take you.

Foreign language words might also give you a nudge in the right direction. For example, German has a word that refers specifically to the “glad it wasn’t me” attitude that some people take up when something bad happens to someone else. Chinese has a word that literally means “horse horse tiger tiger” and means “so-so.”

Collaborate

Sometimes writers go too deep into the “me zone” and end up isolated. Whether you get in touch with fellow writers online, on campus, or in a local writing group, your peers might be able to give you the boost that you need. Listen to their ideas and contribute your own; you’ll come up with something that neither of you could have concocted on your own. Collaborative writing is a challenge, but the rewards can be beautiful.

Check out some information on Grammarly’s annual collaborative novel, GrammoWriMo, here.

Write Poorly

Grammarly is all about helping you to improve your writing, but bad writing also has its benefits. Bad writing isn’t constrained by your inner editor’s madness. When you accept that you’re not at your best, the words flow freely. Sure, you might throw away what you work on, but you’ll have a fresh mindset.

NaNoWriMo is a fantastic opportunity to write poorly. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is tough, but if you commit yourself to the goal, you’ll end up with something you can take pride in—even if it needs a major rewrite to make it presentable.

Play Games

There are endless games out there that can stimulate your thinking and get you into story mode. You can participate in interactive creative writing games online, or you can just sit down with some Mad Libs and see what happens. Board games are a good way to get you thinking, too. Games like Scrabble, Quelf, and Cranium will have you thinking about words—and perhaps the world in general—in a different light.

Go to Boot Camp

Writing boot camps are structured events wherein there is designated time to write and be productive. There may also be lectures and other encouragement. Participating in a boot camp can help you become more goal-oriented in your writing. The people you meet at a camp will inspire you to stay focused on improving your storytelling skills.

Veg Out With Media

Steal some ideas! Watch movies and TV shows, dive into a new book, or look at photography and other artwork. Pick out the elements that touch you and adapt them; make them your own in your next project. If you’re really in love with a particular book or show, you might even try your hand at fan fiction just for the fun of it.

Sometimes words might pour out of you like water out of a broken faucet. At other times, you might feel like you need to call a plumber to come unclog the pipes. When the latter happens, use the above tips to find inspiration for your writing and get the ideas flowing. Do you have any special techniques you use to give your storytelling a kick?