WASHINGTON -- Dear sir or madman.

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 in the trash 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 specializing in accounting and finance.

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 quickly 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.

By the way, Accountemps is a division of Robert Half. In one survey, the staffing conglomerate found that, overwhelmingly, hiring managers were intolerant of a few errors. In another, it found managers admitting that candidates weren't living up to their stellar resumes.

So once you know that many managers are screening you based on perfection, how do you avoid getting your resume pushed to the side? Accountemps offers the following tips for creating error-free resumes:

-- Find another pair of eyes. Get someone to proofread your resume. Seriously, don't dismiss this simple tip that you probably know already. Do I have to repeat again how tough this job market is? So don't send out a single resume or cover letter without having someone read it over for you.

-- Put the resume down and come back to it later with your own fresh eyes. Take a break and reread it when you may be less harried.

-- Print a copy. Please don't skip this suggestion. It's so easy to overlook errors after staring at a computer monitor for a long time. My husband often uses a ruler and places it below each line he's reading.

-- Read your resume aloud. I've read my share of resumes, scratching my head wondering what in the world was the candidate trying to say.

-- Review your resume from the bottom up. Starting from the back and moving forward will help avoid skipping over certain sections. Continued...