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Avoiding Horror Words and Phrases in your Resume

Written by: Tom Hannemann

Article Overview: Your resume should provide employers and recruitment consultants with insight and it should help them understand what you have to offer, what you have achieved and what level of responsibility has been thrust upon you. It should therefore be clear and unambiguous. This means that we need to be aware of some of the terms and phrases we might use that could disguise, confuse or obfuscate (a word to definitely avoid). The more questions an employer or recruitment consultant has, the less they understand about you, the harder it is for them to include you on the interview list.

Avoiding Horror Words and Phrases in your Resume

Liaise

This is at the top of my list. I have never seen so many liaisons since that movie with you know who. It seems that almost every person in the world spends a good deal of their time at work liaising. No problem there, but the word covers up a multitude of so many sins. The questions are: With whom did you liaise? Why did you liaise with them? What was the intended outcome of the liaison? and, What did you liaise with them about? Answer these questions and you avoid using the word altogether.

Involved

This is a close second. Everyone seems to be involved in things. Again, the problem is that it does not inform the reader about your responsibilities and could lead them to conclude that you played a bit part when you might have been in a leading role. Using this word could suggest to the reader that you could not be bothered to explain your role or that you don’t understand your role. Neither is a conclusion you want your reader to draw. Explain what your involvement was. Let them know what part you played, how you contributed and what impact your efforts had on the outcome. What was your involvement? What was the level of your involvement? In what way were you involved?

Contributed

Another vague term. What was your contribution? What were you responsible for? What was the level of your contribution. I have read resumes where people contribute to the development of a strategy. Does this mean they copied and collated the document or did they take minutes of meetings or did they develop the ideas behind the strategy or did they do the research or did they present and sell it or what?

Assisted

Same issue as most of the above. What assistance did you provide? What level was this assistance? How did you assist? What were you responsible for?

Participate

Like assist, contribute, involve and liaise, it does not inform the reader about what you actually did. What was your participation? In what way did you participated? What were you accountable for?

Support

Same argument as for “assisted”. What was the nature of your support? What did you do? What were you responsible for ensuring or achieving in supporting.

Key Role

What was your role? What part did you play? What was your input or contribution. Spell it out. Using a few more words is far better than leaving the reader in the dark. After all, the aim is to enlighten the reader. Some people play an integral role. Again, what were you responsible for ensuring or achieving?

Dealt With

Similar to liaise. What were your dealings? How did you deal with them? What did you deal with them about? Why did you deal with them?

Strategic

Far too many people think that what they do is strategic. Everything these days seems to have a strategic impact. Doesn’t anyone just get on and do the job anymore? Strategic is now used as an adjective in front of just about everything. Be careful. Use it sparingly. Don’t suggest that you had a strategic role, when you didn’t. Even if you did have a strategic role, explain what you did rather than trying to cover everything with strategic. Use the word strategically!

Issues

Like strategic, everyone has issues today and people are always managing issues. The issue is that it hides what you did. What was the issue and what did you do to manage it or resolve it or make it go away or whatever you did? Some people say they manage change issues. Fine, but what specific issues associated with the change? Some people resolve customer issues. OK, but what were the issues the customers had that needed to be resolved and what did you do to resolve them?

Facilitate

This literally means “to make easy”. While it might be the correct word to use, too much can be hidden behind it. People often facilitate the implementation of things. But, what was your role and what were you responsible for ensuring or achieving?

Process

As in, processing orders or requests. What were you responsible for ensuring or achieving in processing whatever you processed? And, what was involved in the act of processing?

Successfully

A lot of people say things like: “Successfully implemented….”, “Successfully organised/coordinated….”, “Successfully etc etc…” No need to use it. You would not include in your resume something in which you did not succeed. That would be like including a referee who is going to say negative things about you. That’s the problem with it. It begs the question: “If you did all these things successfully, then what did you do that failed.” Just leave it out. It’s not necessary. It adds nothing.

Effectively

Same as “successfully”. You are not going to talk about things you did that were ineffective. Again, it’s over used and abused. Some people even effectively liaise. This is nice for them, but adds little value to the reader’s understanding of your accomplishments and experience.

Considerable, Substantial and Significant

Be specific. Cite your experience or expertise. Considerable is a largely meaningless word because its interpretation depends on the reader’s frame of reference. One reader might think that five years experience is considerable. Another might think that two years is. If you significantly reduced costs, indicated the $ or % by which you reduced them. If your strategies resulted in a substantial growth in the firm’s client base, indicated the $ value or the number of new clients. This of course, requires you to keep a note of your achievements as you go, which is not a bad idea.

Utilise

Don’t use it. It’s just a fancy word for use. The simpler and clearer the language the more the recruitment consultant and employer will like you. Never use a fancy or complex word when there is a simpler one available. Some people are fond of the word “employed” when they mean used. To employ means to hire or engage or give work to, which is want your resume to help you get.

Project Managed

I realise that I may make some enemies out there in IT land, but this is a bit like the use of the term “medalled” adopted by many Olympic Games commentators (particularly former athletes) to denote that a person has won a medal. You can be a project manager and you can manage projects, but something cannot be project managed. This would be like saying “I project managed the project.” No, you managed the project. You managed the implementation of the system. You managed the design of the network. Of course you use a project management methodology in order to manage the project, but you don’t have to say you project managed, particularly if your role is that of a Project Manager.

Capitals

Capital letters, that is. It seems that many people want to capitalise almost everything these days. Call me old fashioned, but capital letters are reserved for the names of people, places, brands, positions/jobs, companies, organisations and so forth.

Abbreviations

When you use an abbreviation it can be taken that you could not be bothered spelling out the full form. If the term or name is so well known and so widely used or consistently used in its abbreviated form (such as BHP or IBM or ISP or the ABC or SDLC) by your readers, then no problem. But, if the reader may not know the term or name, then spell it out. On the other hand, some people use the full name of the term or organisation or whatever and then put the abbreviation in brackets after it when it’s the only time the term or name is going to be used. Why? This is only useful if you are going to use the term several times throughout the rest of the document.

Apostrophes

For whatever bizarre reason, the apostrophe has crept into places where it should not be. Apostrophes denote the possessive form of the word, as in John’s hat or the children’s shoes or the audience’s applause. Or, when there are more than one, the readers’ attitudes or the players’ diets. When the word is simply the plural form of a noun, there is no apostrophe. You just add the “s” or, in some cases “es” with no apostrophe.


I know some of this probably verges on the edge of being pedantic (some will say it’s right in the middle of the pond), but what if the recruitment consultant or HR Manager or employer is? Might as well be safe.

After reading all this, you might get the idea that writing an effective resume is hard work, takes time and effort and quite a bit of thought. I agree. However, it’s worth getting right because it’s often the only link between your current situation and your future.

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  The Creative Resume
  An Error Free Resume - Ten Proofreading Tips

Article Tags: bit part, conclusion, liaison, liaisons, minutes of meetings, multitude, participation, resumes, top of my list, using the word, vague term
Referred by: http://www.kyliehammond.com.au



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