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“Rubbish Recruiters Say?”

Written by: Ashley Kate HR
Published on: 8 Sep 2014

We all know that being a recruitment consultant involves talking, a lot of talking. Whether speaking with candidates or clients, our days are always sure to be filled with lots of conversations and talking from dawn til dusk comes with the territory.

Each recruitment consultant I know has their own style and quirks and ultimately, either knowingly or unknowingly, a number of sayings or “catchphrases” that tend to find their way in to a lot of the conversations being had. Sometimes, these phrases are a little cringey, cheesy or even quite meaningless, but we all (I included) find ourselves using them.

Open forum at this point, I wanted here to make a short, sharp commentary around some of the more annoying, cringey and meaningless phrases that somehow seem to find their way in not just a recruitment consultants vocabulary, but business professionals in general.  I say business professionals in general, because the kind of language I’m referring to isn’t just limited to recruitment consultants; but can be heard in offices throughout the UK every day.

meaningless wordsWhy then isn’t this blog called “Rubbish Business Professionals Say In Offices Throughout the UK Everyday” I hear you say? Well, because that’s a rubbish title for a blog obviously!

So, here you go. A few examples for you. I’m sure some of these will make the ‘pet hates’ list of many, but here are a few that I, and a few people I know think are the worst offenders:

I wanted to “touch base” – with what? Are we in the Airforce and heading back to base? I don’t understand

I’ll know by ‘close of play’ – Is there a test match on today?

‘Seasoned professional’ – Yes sirree there’s plenty of salt and pepper, a good rub of garlic and a chilli kick with this one…

‘You’re on my radar’ – See we are in the airforce! I knew it!

‘At the end of the day’ – It’s night time?

‘Ticking all the boxes’ – And our survey says?

‘Moving forward’ – is definitely the opposite of moving backwards

‘Excellent’ – when said in response to something that’s quite clearly not excellent

‘I wanted to reach out to you’  – hang on I know this one, its The Four Tops isn’t it?

groundrunning meme

‘Thinking outside of the box’ – Who is in the box, are we in it together?

‘Hit the ground running’ keep on running, keep on hiding, one fine day…etc, etc

Little rant over! These are some of the rubbish phrases we try hard not to but fall into the trap of using. I’d be very interested to hear yours. Do you think we ‘have covered all the bases’ here? Are there some others that should be on the list? Let me know your thoughts. email me jo.pearson@ashleykatehr.com for more musings from me why not follow me on twitter.

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