Attention to detail is something everyone can and should do — especially in tight job market. Bob Crossley, a human-resources expert notices this in the job applications that come across his desk every day. “It’s amazing how many candidates cross out themselves,” he says.
“Resumes (简历)arrive with faults. Some candidates don’t bother to spell the company’s name correctly. Once I see a mistake, I cross out the candidates,” Crossley concludes. “If they cannot take care of these details, why should we trust them with a job?”
Can we pay too much attention to details? Perfectionists struggle over little things at the cost of something larger they work toward. “To keep from losing the forest for the trees,” says Charles Garfield, the professor at the University of California, San Francisco, “We must constantly ask ourselves how the details we’re working on fit into the larger picture. If they don’t, we should drop them and move to something else.”
Garfield compares this process to his work as a computer scientist at NASA. “The Apollo II moon launch was slightly off course 90 percent of the time,” says Garfield. “But a successful landing was still likely because we knew the exact position of our goal. This allowed us to make adjustments as necessary.” Knowing where to go helps us judge the importance of every task we undertake.
Too often we believe what accounts for others’ success is some special secret or a lucky break. But rarely is success so mysterious. Again and again, we see that by doing little things within our grasp well, large rewards follow.
According to the passage, some job applicants were rejected because .
A.they failed to present resumes that are free of mistakes |
B.they failed to give a detailed description of their background |
C.they crossed out their names from the applicants list themselves |
D.their handwriting on the resume was hard to recognize |
The underlined word “cross out” in the first paragraph probably means ______.
A.neglect | B.recommend | C.wipe | D.introduce |
The third paragraph is intended to state that .
A.trees are as important as forests |
B.we should pay much attention to details |
C.we shouldn’t go too far in details to lose our goals |
D.perfectionists are capable of achieving perfect results |
The example of Apollo II moon launch is given to show that .
A.minor mistakes can be ignored |
B.failure is the mother of success |
C.adjustments are the key to the successful completion of any work |
D.keeping one’s goal in mind helps decide which details can be overlooked |