#41: Job search tips made to make your mouth water
And turn your tongue blue.
I’ve had some things to deal with that I won’t bore you with. But rather than leave your inboxes empty (lol) I thought I’d shower you with the glory that is this blog post from September 2012. If you’re a recent subscriber, this’ll be new to you. If you’re a time-served follower, this might just act as a great reminder.
In either case, thank you for being here. Off we go.
Choc-full of 80s references, it’ll make you think about being more selective with the words you use in your CV. Back to normal next time.
Opal Fruits. KiaOra. Lucozade. A 10p mix from the post office. Wham bars. And a host of otherwise unsuspecting day to day foodstuffs.
The 80s were the times of brightly coloured sweets and day-glow fizzy pop.
Artificial colours, flavours, preservatives and other additives—so-called “E numbers”—were everywhere.
There’s probably a reason why the Ready Brek Kid went off to school encircled in an orange glow, in winters evoking thoughts of Tundra.
These were the scourge of parenting, turning otherwise perfectly reasonable children into crazy, uncontrollable monsters. Hyperactivity was born.
👆 My first experience of a Wham bar was in 1985 on a my first trip to Alton Towers, in the back of Christopher’s dad’s car as we all headed there for his 10th birthday treat.
The food industry faced a consumer backlash over all these E numbers, so what did they do? Got rid of them.
Well, not entirely. The same ingredients popped up, but with more sanitised names.
E102 became Tartrazine, E124 became Ponceau 4R... and so on.
Consumers got wise to this and then the science linked E-laden foods with behavioural issues in children.
So the food industry went looking for new, more natural methods to colour and flavour and stabilise their products.
And yes, food began to get a little less bright, but it also got a bit less bad for you.
They didn’t need all those chemical additives to sell more sweets, they just needed food to make kids slightly less tyrannical.
Oooh guess what? It’s analogy time. Yay!
See, additives in CVs, like E110 (aka Unset Yellow) are completely unnecessary, especially given the rich, natural vocabulary at our disposal.
Here’s some examples.
Utilised, ideated, excellent, passionate, spearheaded, paradigm, outstanding, results driven, team player, well organised.
They are rubbish words. Words that add little value to a CV, other than upping your naff rating.
Consider the evolution of this sentence:
Utilised analytics and market data to spearhead a paradigm shift, with excellent results.
Hmm. I can smell the BS a mile off. Let’s have another go:
Used analytics and market data to develop a brand new framework for managing production, unlocking £500k in operating efficiencies.
Or better still:
Unlocked £0.5m in operating efficiencies through complex analysis of consumer trends and market data, and development of a new production model.
Utilised, in particular, is one very overused word, but ironically is also about the most useless. Just say “used”.
It doesn’t make you look big or clever. Quite the opposite in fact.
Unless you’re talking about increasing utilisation of a resource. Literally increasing the utils.
👆Jack held aloft his Mont Blanc pen and said “By the Power of Bullshit!”
Excellent, outstanding and world-class.
OK, in most cases you can avoid using these subjective terms and replace then with something meaningful and objective, like numbers.
“Delivered excellent results” isn’t a patch on “Grew sales 43% year on year”, is it?
And besides, telling the reader you’re outstanding at anything only makes you look outstanding at being a bit of a nob.
World-class is a tricky one. When it comes to quality management, logistics, manufacturing… these things may legitimately be labelled as such if they truly meet an international bar of quality, efficiency, technology and an unyielding pursuit of continuous improvement.
So use it, but only if it’s actually the case, and not something you made up, as otherwise your ego will be writing cheques your capability cannot cash.
Team player, results driven, highly organised, experienced, punctual… ra ra rah.
Just no. These words are emptier than the Tupperware I just removed from my dishwasher. And a lot of people still use them. The words that is, not the Tupperware.
Explaining how you influenced stakeholders (or senior colleagues, peers, the leadership team), or developed time management tools, or supported your colleagues in bullet points will hold much more weight.
Then you have the superfluous words—saying three words where one will do. I nearly did it above.
I originally typed “…the Tupperware I just took out of my dishwasher”. “…I just removed from…” is better.
So, when writing your CV (or any reasonably important document) follow these rules:
Don’t be tempted to try and make yourself look all intelligent by stealing all the words from a game of Bullshit Bingo.
Because you’ll fail.
Simplify, and use (not utilise) ‘real’ everyday words. Don’t flower it up for the sake of it.
Avoid pointing out the very basics you’d expect from an employee.
Edit and hone, and remove unnecessary words.
I’m off to eat a thesaurus, laden with artificial words.
See you next time,
Phil
In the socials…
Here’s one with some more word-based advice. Like knowing you’re shit.
Here’s a borderline-viral post about adding something to your CV—or not.
And here’s a 30 minute video to help you deal with tough interview questions.
I also wrote this eBook on how to master behavioural interviews. Take a look!
Anyway, hope you’ve enjoyed this thrilling instalment.
I do this stuff for free in the vain hope that it’ll get shared about a bit and a handful of people will support me by buying me a pint.
You can either do that by becoming a paid subscriber… (really it’s only a few quid)
… or by giving me a one off tip. Your loose digital change. I’m not too proud to ask for it!
I am an recruitment industry veteran with expertise gained across industries, as an agency recruiter, in-house recruiter, a fancy Head of Resourcing, and as a project manager of multiple recruitment process and systems implementations and outsourcings. I know my onions.