Dropping the Buzzwords from our Profiles

The first time I ever wrote a resume in college, a friend teased me about describing my responsibilities at a golf course snack bar as “cash flow management.” My friend caught me trying to grasp at language that would sound impressive. 

Years later, while getting ready to graduate from Harvard Business School, I found myself similarly searching for impressive-sounding buzzwords to describe my work experience. I even used “spearhead” as a verb to describe leading a project. In one class workshop, everyone exchanged resumes, and I realized that all of us were drawing from the same buzzword thesaurus.

 It struck me as funny how no one actually talks like that in real life. Buzzwords are rampant in business, but rarely do we find as many buzzwords as in someone’s LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn recently released the most overused buzzwords in member profiles. The top ten includes “leadership,” “motivated,” “driven,” “passionate,” and “extensive experience.”

 LinkedIn approached me to collaborate on a cartoon series to highlight the inherent humor of profile buzzwords. If we wouldn’t use buzzwords in real life, why are we putting them on our LinkedIn profiles? There are far more illustrative ways to explain or show what we do.

You can see the full list of top buzzwords in 2016, along with my cartoons, in the SlideShare below – complete with tips from LinkedIn on how to banish them from our profiles.

Buzzwords get in the way of being understood. If it’s worth sharing in your LinkedIn profile, it’s worth describing in plain English.