Monday, 16 September 2013

The monotonous world of overused CV words

A survey suggests that the terms "hard-working", "team player" and "motivated" are so ubiquitous in CVs that they have become utterly meaningless. But what might you write instead, asks Finlo Rohrer.
It's not easy to write the covering letter that goes with CVs. You know it's going into a massive pile that will leave some poor recruiter dead-eyed in a supremely bored fugue. The sentiments you want to express are not just samey, they can even be counterproductive. Simply stating you're "creative" does seem rather to show the opposite.
Perhaps you should adopt the old journalistic adage of "show me, don't tell me". As an old journalism professor once said: "Don't start a sentence with 'interestingly…'. Let the reader be the judge of that." If having described a feat you have to say it is "spectacular" either a) you're not very good at describing feats or b) the feat really wasn't that spectacular. 

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