Moving forward, I just want to reach out and touch base before beginning this feature I am about to action. You know, before there’s a paradigm shift. Whatever the heck that is…
We are all guilty of resorting to jargon every once in a while. It’s only natural: we live in a jargon-filled world, where street signs, politicians and even your friends cannot help but spout some phrase or other that makes them appear like alien invaders from another planet. We live in the era of the buzzword.
Buzzwords are nothing new, as anyone who has ever watched a professional footballer being interviewed will attest, but our desire to display our feelings through the internet at almost every point of the day means they have gained a certain ubiquity.
Of course, the worst buzzword of all, is, well, ‘buzzword’, but that doesn’t stop us from finding new and less interesting ways of sounding like morons.
And buzzwords don’t just demean us verbally – they can take us to a whole new level of absurdity in written form, where we think we can hide them. Wrong. An errant bland word on a document can decide our future, so why do persist in putting them in our CVs?
If it’s difficult obtaining a job these days, spare a thought for the poor people who have to go through millions of résumés that contain so much yet say so little.
We’ve all done it. Why spend an extra hour honing our CV into something worthy, something great, something majestic when we can slap down a few well-worn standards that will fill some space? Because you may not find another job.
Employers are quickly gathering a naughty list of the most pointless phrases you can stick in your CV. Any CV that describes its owner as ‘punctual’ deserves to go straight in a bin, but adjectives such as ‘enthusiastic’ and ‘hard-working’ aren’t much better. The big bugbear right now for recruiters is when applicants tell them how great they are at working with others.
‘There probably was a time when saying you were a team player was a new and fresh thing to say,’ said career coach John Lees, author of How To Get A Job You’ll Love.
‘Team player is a great example because it doesn’t actually mean anything and yet it’s in most people’s CVs. Because everyone says it, therefore it has no currency. There are lots of roles that people have in teams.’
Instead of writing what you are, applicants should concentrate on what they’ve done, he said. ‘There is a simple answer to all this stuff and that is: show, don’t tell. Rather than saying you are a team player, give an example of where you’ve worked in a team and what your contribution was. Evidence rather than claims is a good rule. If you write a CV which is actually about outcomes and results, you tend to naturally skip away from the clichéd stuff.’
The problem with clichés is they become clichés very quickly. Decades ago, perhaps your stipulation that you like a challenge was completely inspired. Those days are gone.
Lees said: ‘What starts as a vibrant saying, like “thinking outside the box”, quickly becomes a cliché, and using a cliché says, “I’m out of date”. That can happen relatively quickly. They’ve always been there, it’s not a new trend. We’ve become more attuned to them.’
So don’t go telling prospective employers that you’re a game-changer any more. And don’t tell them you’re proficient in Microsoft Word, either. For Lees though, the worst crime is wackiness.
‘The irritating ones tend to be the ones that try to convey personality on paper, so “fun-loving”, “energetic”, “enthusiastic” – it doesn’t work. It’s about having an ear for the language that employers find empty.’
He also pointed out that drawing attention to something obvious makes the reader question its validity – writing that you are ‘reliable’, for instance, might lead an employer to doubt your claim. There are other words that get on recruiters’ nerves.
‘All this about “cutting edge” and “team player” and “dynamic” – ugh, they’re always bloody dynamic,’ said Denise Taylor, careers psychologist at Amazing People and author of How To Get A Job In A Recession.
‘What does dynamic mean? You can’t just say, “I’m dynamic”. It’s a bit like saying, “I’m good-looking”. It’s in the eyes of the beholder. What you’ve got to do is to give examples. You can’t just use those words because you come across as pretty rubbish, really. As soon as a real person sees it, they’ll fling it out. Generic terms aren’t going to get you shortlisted.’
The problem with buzzwords in CVs, said Lees, is that so many people are using them that following suit will never make you stand out from the crowd.
‘There are a lot of buzzwords and a lot of clichés in CVs and when people use them, what they actually send out is a message that says “I’m just like everyone else”.
‘It’s very much like jokes. You hear a joke at stand-up comedy and it’s great. The next thing that joke is on people’s T-shirts and you’re tired of it.’