Why You Shouldn’t Be Like a LinkedIn Influencer When Applying for a Job
Because corporate jargon is so widespread and large companies are normalizing the use of yogic chatter , it’s easy to fall into the traps set by LinkedIn influencers and the like, especially when you’re writing a resume or cover letter.
If enough people are using buzzwords with seemingly persuasiveness, the aspiring professional might consider spicing up their resume and cover letters in the same language. However, the truth is that you will appear more knowledgeable without calling yourself “well versed in agile marketing campaigns” or “a leader looking to scale data-driven startups.”
But first, it helps you understand what buzzwords are and how they can easily end up in your job application.
What are the buzzwords?
There are a few buzzwords that only become buzzwords because they are abused, not because they are necessarily meaningless. In business terms, you are probably familiar with the fact that some aspects of a company are called the “ecosystem” or its obsession with “touchpoints” and constant “touchpoints”. These terms aren’t necessarily useless, although the work world is overwhelmed with them, so you should try to get rid of corporate jargon from your vocabulary in order to appear more human.
“The purpose of a resume is to get interview requests from you. You want the person reading this to feel like there is a real person on the other side of the resume and not some faceless drone, ”Marc Cenedella, founder of Leet Resumes, told Lifehacker. “It’s important to write sentences that sound like real people.”
The roughest example of buzzwords is when words used in a corporate environment don’t really matter. These terms exist to position whoever uses them as a kind of self-styled expert or industry insider, proficient in a language that only a select, highly qualified person can use.
Courtesy of Indeed , here are ten overloaded terms that easily fall into the realm of buzzwords:
- Return on investment
- Synergy
- The path to the client
- Deep dive
- Influence
- Ballpark
- Core competence
- Visibility
- Run
- Sustainability
There is much more than that, so it’s good to understand what it shows when you use these terms, and how to replace them with better, clearer, and more direct language. Without empty rhetoric, you will look more human.
How to replace buzzwords with more meaningful language
Many candidates – especially the greener ones who may have just graduated from the business program – tend to forget that they are promoting not only their skills, but also themselves as people who are sympathetic and sympathetic. There are any number of reasonable synonyms out there that replace the overly harsh and clichéd prose you might use in your cover letter, Cenedella says.
He’s writing:
Don’t say, “I was hired to synergize inter-firm content provisioning to optimize our consumer-centric growth matrix,” when you mean, “They hired me to make our social media rock, and I was successful.”
Basically, you want to strive for simplicity. Senedella takes this idea even further with a good example: “It’s a good rule of thumb: if you don’t talk like that to your coworkers over beer, you shouldn’t write like that on your resume.” If you want to showcase your accomplishments, feel free to do so, but don’t hesitate over rowdy nonsense.
Most importantly, you are not a brand , so there is no need to introduce yourself as such or stick to buzzwords used by certain people and companies. Removing the jargon and honestly communicating your strengths and accomplishments will set yourself up for success.