I Don’t Speak “Buzzword”: Episode 1

What’s Being Done Wrong

I get alerts from LinkedIn about marketing positions in the area.   It lets me know what companies are looking for, and how I can tailor my approach to be more attractive to them.

Today I got a job alert for a company with half a billion in annual revenue.  This is the job description:

This extremely unique and cross-functional position achieves results through facilitation and collaboration with key stakeholders from across the business and information technology teams. This role will determine strategic digital needs, develop and prioritize initiatives, ensure alignment with cross-functional budgets and resources, and act as a key stakeholder on various digital initiatives to ensure delivery. This role is a subject matter expert for the program portfolio and drives the long-term roadmap prioritization and alignment across all business units. The key outcome is to build the best possible experience for the [company] customer.

I’ll start with the linguistic pedantics and point out that a thing can’t be “extremely unique”, and bounce right back to “It’s a marketing job”–which is in no way either “extreme” or “unique”.

Then I’ll move on to mention that the quoted paragraph is utterly unintelligible and doesn’t say what the person is actually expected to do.  It’s just a blob of gobbledygook buzzwords.

And I’ll finish with this:  Anyone who is enticed by this blob of nonsense has no clue about the realities of marketing–and the candidates that the company really needs won’t come anywhere near this job.

How to Do It Right

Marketing, sales, engineering… pretty much every department requires clear communication.  HR seems to be the exception.  Get rid of the HR staff writing this buzzword-saturated glob of nonsense and hire people who know how to communicate clearly, efficiently, and accurately.

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