Awful CV buzzwords

LinkedIn has kindly rounded up the 10 most overused profile buzzwords in the USA

I’m sure people don’t really want to use these words and phrases, but lots of people end up doing so. This is partly because recruiters put these awful phrases in person specifications so you feel the need to respond in kind, but also it’s a herd mentality. “If all my competitors claim they are results-oriented, will I lose if I don’t claim it too?”

If you work or aspire to work in the kind of industry where LinkedIn profiles might help, who isn’t going to claim implicitly or explicitly that they are innovative, motivated, results-oriented, dynamic, a fast-paced team-playing problem solver? Are there any industries calling for hide-bound, lazy, aimless, static, loners?

“Extensive experience” and “proven track record” at least say something concrete about you – that you have been working in/on/at x for some time.

How do you avoid these awful words? I’ve adopted a “show, don’t tell” approach on the latest version of my cv, so I don’t use empty adjectives about myself (no doubt someone will spot one now).

I haven’t gotten rid of all the awful business-speak words yet though. I keep using the word “undertook” or “undertake” – who says that in real life?

What do I wish I knew about the Real World before I started working?

This post is part of a blog series on Brazen Careerist being sponsored by JobSTART101.  They asked Brazen members to answer the question:  What do I wish I knew before I started working?  Here’s my response:

I have now started working in the Real World on three separate occasions. My first Real World job was straight after post-16 education. Then I went to university. Then I got a non-graduate job (although having a degree helped). Then I went to university again. Then I got a graduate job, and that’s the job I’m in today.

Each of those jobs was completely different, as was each job hunt.

The first job – chemistry analyst for a water company – I applied for almost on a whim. I had taken a year out before university and was doing casual work to keep me in beer. I saw the job advertised in the New Scientist and applied for it because it was the only job in there that didn’t require a degree.

The second job was as a research and information assistant for a local authority. I had graduated but for personal reasons could not move home for work, nor was commuting far an option. I had turned down a PhD because I wanted to get away from university for a while. I had reluctantly gone to the graduate careers fairs on campus, but was at a loss. I hadn’t got the idea of transferable skills into my head and looked at every stall thinking “why would they employ someone with an ecology degree?”. I always left thinking that it was only for lawyers and accountants.

My final job hunt was an entirely different affair. The masters course I studied was very industry-oriented so we had lots of companies come in and give presentations, and between Christmas and Easter the question was always “How many graduate schemes have you applied for?”. I approached this with gusto, pleased to finally be undertaking a focussed job hunt for an environmental consultancy role. Thing is, I didn’t need a masters degree to go for these jobs; it’s just that it never occurred to me that I should apply for jobs with engineering firms when I was job-hunting the previous time around.

So, all of my encounters with the Real World have been new and different. I haven’t yet moved directly from one Real World job to another, I always tend to do a degree in between which is not really a sustainable practice. If there is one thing to relate about the Real World it is that it is massive and varied, and you will probably never comprehend the existence of more than a fraction of it. I’ve seen three bits of it because I keep hopping in and out, but I was constrained each time by my limited knowledge of what the possibilities were. The Real World’s variety of landscape means that there are many opportunities, but you need to know to look. The danger of the Real World is that the soil is soft underfoot, and it is easy to get stuck in a rut that you have ploughed. From your rut, it can appear that the only way is forward in the line your rut follows. This is fine if you are ploughing in the direction you want to go, but if you aren’t then it can take a lot of effort and courage to look up and out and see what else is out there.

What happens when all the jobs are outsourced?

Are you indespensable?  Or, as Seth Godin would put it, a linchpin?

I came across this article recently, “Engineers as Commodities” – it’s 5 years old now but it covers a lot of what I’ve been thinking about recently.  It talks about how, as a lot of engineering work has been made increasingly routine, it has effectively become commoditised and ripe for outsourcing.

Pink has three questions for you about earning a living:

Can someone overseas do your job cheaper?

Can a computer do your job faster?

Is what you offer in demand, in an age of abundance?

If you answered ‘yes’ to 1 or 2, or ‘no’ to 3, you could be in deep trouble.

I wonder though if this will lead to a fall in the number of engineers in the developed world, as so many engineering roles are outsourced.  I don’t think it will.  Engineering will expand – is expanding – into roles that either didn’t exist until recently or weren’t considered engineering.

I work in an engineering consultancy on a floor full of engineers.  The floor above is full of environmental scientists, working on the same projects as the engineers.  Is an ecologist an engineer?  Yes, if they are applying their skills to how engineering designs are developed.  Ground engineers ensure that a building won’t subside, an ecologist ensures that local habitat and wildlife aren’t unduly affected.  To me, they are both doing engineering.

I’ve started working on tools for carbon footprinting – measuring the carbon impact of a development.  This hasn’t even existed very long as a concept, let alone a job.  Is it engineering?  Yes, because it influences how the design is developed.

As time goes on, and tools and standards are developed, parts of some engineering disciplines will continue to be commoditised, just as mass manufacturing replaced cottage industries.  Does this mean there are fewer jobs?  No, it just means the jobs are in different areas.  Once you no longer need an entire floor of engineers doing manual calculations and hand-drawn designs then considering other things, like ecology or carbon, becomes possible.

You don’t need to take a gap year…

…but you don’t need to go straight to university either.  What you need to do is get on with the next year of your life.

An article in the Daily Telegraph today entitled “Bridging the work experience gap” got me thinking about my attitude to gap years.  After college (study at 16-18, for my international readers) I intended to take a gap year, which soon turned into two.  By “take a gap year”, what I mean is I went to Vietnam for three months as a volunteer with the environmental NGO Frontier, doing environmental work.  My plan for the remaining nine months was to stay at home with my parents and have semi-regular work that would keep me in cider until I went to university, after which my student loan would be keeping me in cider (I was a late convert to beer).

However, I ended up getting a year-long contract as a chemistry analyst in a water company laboratory.  I only applied on the off-chance, it being the only job in the New Scientist that didn’t require a degree.  Somehow I got it, so I moved away from home and UEA kindly allowed me to defer taking up my place for another year.  It was awesome, and actually far more formative than my time abroad.  I moved in to a shared house in a new town, and started earning money and paying rent for the first time.

Was this a gap (two-)year?  It started out like that, with the standard extended overseas trip and an assured place at university.  Or was it just the next two years of my life, which happened not to be in formal education?  The idea of a gap-year implies that spending your entire time in formal education is the natural order of things and that doing something else, however positive, is a “gap” in the fabric of what you should be doing.  I don’t agree with this.  University isn’t for everybody, and university straight after college certainly isn’t.  I am a university person so I went to university.  But I am also someone who needs variety, so a two-year breather from formal education was just what I needed.  Some people should go straight to university, some never.  There are plenty of options, like delaying university, or studying part-time (the Open University is the biggest university in the UK!), or getting a job, or whatever.

So, don’t take a gap year, but do get on with the next year of your life.  Make it a good one.

Take a deep breath…

I have taken a plunge, which in reality is barely a plunge at all.  Until last week I worked full-time, Monday-Friday.  For a year or so I felt that this was preventing me from going out and exploring other opportunities, money-making or not.  Finally, I decided to take decisive action!  Did I go freelance?  Did I set up my own company?  No and twice no.  Instead, I cut my hours to a four-day week!

In the big scheme of things, this is nothing.  A friend of mine runs a venture capital-funded internet start-up business; another just seems to manage to float from job to job, always landing on her feet.  Me, I’m generally quite risk averse, and appreciate the comfort of a regular salary.  So to give up about a fifth of my earnings feels like a much bigger wrench than it actually is.  All I will have to do is keep more track of my beer and discretionary spending money.

Last week was actually my first four-day week, although I didn’t find that out until Tuesday, having already taken the Monday off to attend a day of mentor training (more of which in a later post).  However, from this week my default working week will be Mon-Tue and Thur-Fri at the salaried coalface, with Wednesdays free for whatever current scheme I have going.  I made a conscious decision to make my non-salary day (not my day-off!!) a mid-week day – if it had been Monday or Friday the would be too much temptation to make it an extension of my weekend.

What will I be doing with my non-salary day?  I will be pursuing some freelance work, although I don’t expect this to make up much of the salary I am foregoing.  The point is more for it to be an exercise in developing and selling my skills.  I will also be spending some time researching some stuff that I have been interested in for a while, but haven’t had the time to do anything about.  A long way down the line this may or may not lead to gainful employment.  This week, I shall be attending Birmingham C21st Innovation Showcase, about local tech start-ups.  I don’t have an invention up my sleeve, but hopefully it will be food for thought.