Growing up, I was never terribly strong at math (just ask my 7th grader when he needs help with his pre-algebra homework) but I always had an affinity for English — and a fascination with language and the challenge of finding the exact right word for a given purpose.
Not surprisingly, this lifelong love has carried over into my work as a career coach and I enjoy the challenge of trying to “package” people as effectively as possible – using all the right words — on documents such as resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles. Even beyond this obvious application, however, I believe that there is a strong correlation between the terminology generated by the corporate arena and concepts that career-minded professionals today can benefit from focusing on.
On this note, I’ve taken a moment to outline three emerging corporate buzzwords below that have caught my eye from a career management standpoint:
1) Forcing Function (Definition: a catalyst that changes your default behavior in the future by aligning your short term incentives with your long term goals)
The job hunter takeaway? Essentially, this concept (which has been co-opted from its roots in the science of differential equations) is now used in business to denote situations where one creates a powerful incentive for doing something that, ostensibly, they don’t really want to do. The connotation primarily revolves around the “forcing” part of the term and putting a system in place to hold yourself accountable for something you’ve been procrastinating. So if you’re on the hunt for a new opportunity, consider setting up a “forcing function” of some kind to ensure that you take all of the necessary steps each day to find work. This could be recruiting a friend to hold you accountable, not allowing yourself a reward until you complete a task, or (in non-COVID times) going to a friend’s house, your car, a coffee shop, or the library where there will be nothing else you can really do there – except job hunt. At the end of the day, if you’re struggling with accountability, the goal is to develop a system that will “force” you to avoid distractions and accomplish the tasks you’ve been chronically putting off.
2) Net New Business (Definition: a prospect that you have newly converted into a paying customer or an existing account that has been dormant for a long period but has been re-engaged and reactivated as a revenue-generating account)
The job hunter takeaway? When you’re keeping score and measuring your efforts in your job search, the primary metric you should be concentrating on is “net new” outreach attempts to contacts/companies you haven’t engaged yet in any fashion. By always prioritizing new contacts, versus existing ones, you’ll be compelled to be more proactive, aggressive, and honest in your lead generation efforts. What’s more, this approach will capitalize on the fact that landing interviews is largely a numbers game and that logically, there is zero chance that any given person or company will hire you if they don’t even know you exist in the first place. So if you’ve found yourself largely hunting for leads in the same places each week, or fruitlessly lobbing your resume at the same small set of companies, do some legwork and uncover a set of “net new” people and places that you can approach. To me, this is the lifeblood of a good search, and with over 100,000 employers in the Seattle area alone, it’s virtually impossible you’ll run out of fuel for such an effort.
3) Bespoke (Definition: the description of a product that has been commissioned to a particular specification and altered or tailored to the customs, tastes, or usage of an individual purchaser)
The job hunter takeaway? While I find this word to be awkward-sounding, particularly when used as an adjective, I’ll confess that I keep seeing it every time I turn around. While originally related to the design of custom-tailored clothing, centuries ago, it now has been widely adopted by many companies to showcase the exclusivity or uniqueness of their offerings.
Within the career milieu, I think the concept applies to the job hunting process in several ways. For starters, there’s the notion that in today’s specialized marketplace, creating a customized (bespoke) resume for each and every job you send out is a wise move. Take the time to tweak your resume carefully, before it goes out, to match the stated needs of any given role you’re targeting. Additionally, within the world of LinkedIn profiles, it’s important to not just be a me-too amongst a sea of 600 million other users. Use a customized wallpaper image at the top, a compelling photo, a catchy headline, and other creative copy to set yourself apart from the crowd. And lastly, when it comes to cover letters, one of the primary reasons such documents are now something of an endangered species — with fewer and fewer employers requesting them — is that millions of candidates have simply sent out the same form letter over the years, regardless of the specific opportunity they were targeting. Employers hate this. So if you’re going to write a cover letter, make it a “bespoke” one. Tailor it so precisely to the given employer, and their specific needs, that it’s obvious it couldn’t possibly be written for anyone else.
In closing, again, the study of terms like this and their career applications might be something only a weirdo like myself might enjoy. But I thought I’d share these observations for whatever they’re worth, and if any like-minded folks out there have spotted any similar emerging terms with a useful career correlation, I’d love to hear them!
