I can't do business speak

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve been writing cover letters for job applications, and to the best of my ability I just can’t do the stilted, detached voice they all seem to have. I have to have some of myself in there. I’ve read other people’s cover letters for reference, including my mom’s, and they’re all just striking. If you gave them all to me in a big box I would have looked at you and asked why this one person had so many different cover letters. As if they all came from some university’s natural language processing research project to automatically generate cover letters based on a random selection of skills, positions, and companies.

Formal I can do. I can write very formally, very politely. I can sell myself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not writing “hey, 'sup recruiter homedawg? im all like perfect for ur job and shizz brah (Sent from my iPhone).” Certainly nothing too brazen, casual, nor any half-baked attempt to show off my “quirkiness”. It’s just… through all the formality I feel like I need to bleed through a little bit, just the tiniest bit. Just to make myself feel different from the other 10-billion applicants while still mentioning my skills. I don’t do much, just a slightly different sentence structure or word choice here and there. Maybe throw in a transitioning word now and then. I don’t draw out the letter, I keep it concise and to the point (unlike this post. Take THAT, me). It’s just that I seem to be allergic to writing streams of terse platitudes like “This opportunity would be mutually beneficial and I implore you to grant me an interview at your earliest convenience.”

I mean, for one I don’t think imploring them to grant an interview is going to change their minds. “Hey, all these applicants seemed skilled, but this guy over here? He IMPLORED us, better call him up.” Besides that, though, it just feels like treating the hiring manager like a two year old. Yeah, you have to stress why you’re a good applicant, that’s the whole point – but that’s what mentioning your skills, experience, and creativity is for. You don’t just get to tell somebody you’re a good applicant, of course you think you’re a good applicant, you have to show your strongest (relevant) attributes and let them decide whether you’re strong or not. Yes, I did ask for an interview in the end, but I tried to do it in a way that didn’t sound stilted.

Maybe I’m shooting myself in the foot because I’m not playing by “The Rules”. Everybody I had review it before I sent it out seemed to like it, though (aside from them suggesting I change an instance of “I think” to something stronger, which I did). All I know is that every time I wrote a robotic or stilted sentence I just shook my head and went “this sounds wrong, nobody writes like this” and reworded it. (Even though apparently plenty of people do, indeed, write like that)

Mundane and pointless? Check. Allow me to finish with:

^^^^ Cool story, bro!

So you don’t have to!

2

I’ll let you in on a secret: most people are morons and idiots. I would not feel obligated to write a stilted, crap cover letter just because everyone else’s is stilted crap.

3

Oh, I submitted my version. It was just striking to me how awkward most of them read. I didn’t know if I was missing some etiquette, being exposed to a voice I’m not used to, or if they really were just bad writing.

4

I think you’ll be fine. Blending in with everyone else isn’t really desirable in a job application anyway.

5

Ironic, coming from someone whose name is a scrambled version of “Jargon”. :wink:

I struggle with this myself; I can write formally where required but just don’t seem to have the knack of blending in with that fine mix of professional courtesy that some of my colleagues seem to have. Then again, I don’t worry about it too much - much of what they produce sounds as though it’s come from the mouth of a concussed manager from Dilbert, so perhaps having a bit of character and individuality can only be a good thing.

6

Isn’t there some English-to-businessspeak translator you can run it through?

7

I received this from my lead while working on-site in another country:

I think it means “When are you coming back?”

It crossed my mind that it was intentional as entertainment, but he routinely talks like this.

8

My mom had a mailbox/shipping business for several years, and one of the things she did was also write and then mail out resumes for customers. (Woohoo! Double paycheck!)

The first thing she did was read several of the most recent how to write a resume books. Then she took from that what questions to ask the customer about what they did in their job history and how to turn it into the correct kind of jargon for the job the customer was looking for. She never had an unhappy customer.

So you could try reading some of those books (the most recent b/c styles change or look online) or get some recomendations for resume writers in the area.

I have no idea what this costs anymore and you probably would need to email them, these days.

Good luck!

9

The thing is, I can recognize it when I see it, and I can even write it if I’m being facetious, but when it comes time to actually use it in a serious context my brain goes “thisiswrongthisiswrong”.

It’s like the (imo) atrocious writing in most academic papers I’ve read. The concepts you’re presenting are hard enough to understand, do we really need to complicate things further by calling a ruler a “linear distance analyzer”? My brain just rebels against writing things in over-dense ways in serious papers.

10

Maybe you need to be more proactive and reprioritize shifting your paradigm on your action item list?
There’s actually nothing wrong with allowing a bit of your passion and personality to come through in your business writings. The problem, as **Absolute **pointed out, is that most people are morons and idiots. So rather than accidently say something moronic or something that might be misinterpreted by a moron, they write in that sort of neutral, emotionless business-speak.

11

Ahhhh, you need the Web Economy Bullshit Generator.