Who doesn’t know the feeling… these endless meetings, in which boring presentations are held. Precious time that you could use to do something else. And the worst is that these presentations contain plenty of buzzwords that you hear everyday. So, how can you possibly benefit from this time-wasting moments in your work life?

Now, we have something really valuable for you that will defintely brighten up your day: The new BUZZword Bullshit Bingo for HR and Recruiting! The rules are very simple: As soon as the Buzzword is spoken around you, cross it out. Whoever fully crosses out their first row stands up and screams “Bullshit!”.

Here is our Bullshit Bingo for you! Simply click on the picture for an enlargement

(Oh, by the way, this article is sarcasm, of course. Please do not take it too seriously.)

Now for the ABC’s of HR Buzzwords:

BEST PRACTICE: Means to take a practice or whatever that somehow worked at some point. Mostly, however, it turns out to be a worst practice in one’s own firm.

BIG (fat) DATA: refers to the not-so-bright, who may have once claimed that “data is the oil of the 21st century”. Add in some endless spreadsheets turned pie-charts and you have this Buzzword. After all, why should someone think for themselves when they can get see results in a fancy power point presentation with said pie charts?

CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE: If you are a good recruiter, you should not only know what this means, but also have quite a good concept to ensure your candidates enjoy your hiring process! Candidate experience surely does not mean torturing applicants by confronting them with mean assessment center tasks.

CULTURAL FIT: This can be as easy as a candidate who is ready to work their @%$ off for low pay. By many companies definition of ‘cultural fit’, they would fulfill this criteria perfectly.

CORE COMPETENCE: Is used so often and in so many different contexts that it cannot be defined properly, even after intensive research and literature review.

DIVERSITY: Taken from a job posting of a large international group: “We hire the best talents, regardless of their cultural or ethnic origin, gender, religion or belief, disability, age, sexual identity or orientation ….”. In theory, this is undoubtedly a correct and important concept. In practice, organisations agree that it is important until they realise that they don’t want to act on diversity and that it is actually a part of their PR scheme. (refers to: The NIMBY Effect – “Not in my back yard”). Read more about diversity here.

EMPLOYER BRAND: Either you treat employees better or pay them higher salaries instead — both are going to cost you. German companies know how to accomodate both: music videos with rapping interns. Can you believe it? Let’s talk about an efficient way to improve your employer brand!

INNOVATIVE: Is basically everything and everyone and we are most (besides from being really sustainable). The original definition of “innovative” includes the words NEW and MEANINGFUL. If you’re both, you have the right to call yourself innovative. If only one of them is not fulfilled → BUZZWORD

KPI: Stands for “Key Performance Indicator”. Keep in mind, that not all measurable rubbish must also be a key performance indicator. Surprisingly, this occurs quite often in the realm of BIG DATA. Perhaps it would also be interesting to measure your co-workers step length to get an idea of their chances of professional success. Maybe you were not aware of this correlation, but a German guy did some research on this… OMG.

MICRO MANAGEMENT: Activity of a pedantic know-it-all who gives the impression of having a complete absence of soft skills (see below)

MOBILE RECRUITING: So as to disallow the brain from doing any thinking (see our post on Digital Dementia), we now outsource recruiting activity to our little pocket computers. In doing so, we can now stalk candidates anytime, anywhere. Best for stalking IT experts on the go.

RESILIENCE: Inability to resist or better capacity to suffer. The ability of an employee to keep on working for more than 2 weeks, despite lousy working conditions … If the resilience is too low, it will cost you as an employer. (see post on “How to calculate the cost of a mis-hire”)

SCALABLE: Yes, yes … everything is scalable. Also the percentage of buzzwords per sentence, or the average productivity loss due to cigarette breaks.

SKILLS SHORTAGE:Socially-accepted excuse for the inability to find and hire suitable candidates, because one is not willing to pay an engineer more than a trainee’s salary.

SOFT SKILLS: See Core Competence

„THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX“: Well, more of a “buzzphrase”, really. This one refers to managers who want to encourage creativity. Who decided we live inside of boxes, anyway?

WAR FOR TALENT:Using war metaphors seems to be in fashion. Those who like to say “war for talent” are most likely using “skill shortage” in the same sentence.

Do you know any more buzzwords? Then leave a comment!

Again, this article is full of sarcasm 🙂