Office Jargon

Even when you do find that perfect job, there is always one thing that everyone complains about at some point in their career - office jargon. Some of it is so obscure its not clear where it comes from, and in many cases, what it actually means. This article on the BBC describes people's most hated jargon.

Management speak - don't you just hate it? Emphatically yes, judging by readers' responses to writer Lucy Kellaway's campaign against office jargon (see link). Here, we list 50 of the best, worst examples.

1. "When I worked for Verizon, I found the phrase going forward to be more sinister than annoying. When used by my boss - sorry, "team leader" - it was understood to mean that the topic of conversation was at an end and not be discussed again."
Nima Nassefat, Vancouver, Canada

2. "My employers (top half of FTSE 100) recently informed staff that we are no longer allowed to use the phrase brain storm because it might have negative connotations associated with fits. We must now take idea showers. I think that says it all really."
Anonymous, England

3. At my old company (a US multinational), anyone involved with a particular product was encouraged to be a product evangelist. And software users these days, so we hear, want to be platform atheists so that their computers will run programs from any manufacturer."
Philip Lattimore, Thailand

4. "Incentivise is the one that does it for me."
Karl Thomas, Perth, Scotland

5. "My favourite which I hear from the managers at the bank I work for is let's touch base about that offline. I think it means have a private chat but I am still not sure."
Gemma, Wolverhampton, England

6. "Have you ever heard the term loop back which means go back to an associate and deal with them?"
Scott Reed, Lakeland, Florida, US

7-8. "We used to collect the jargon used in a list and award the person with the most at the end of the year. The winner was a client manager with the classic you can't turn a tanker around with a speed boat change. What? Second was we need a holistic, cradle-to-grave approach, whatever that is."
Turner, Manchester

9. "Until recently I had to suffer working for a manager who used phrases such as the idiotic I've got you in my radar in her speech, letters and e-mails. Once, when I mentioned problems with the phone system, she screamed 'NO! You don't have problems, you have challenges'. At which point I almost lost the will to live."
Stephen Gradwick, Liverpool

10. "You can add challenge to the list. Problems are no longer considered problems, they have morphed into challenges."
Irene MacIntyre, Courtenay, B

11. "Business speak even supersedes itself and does so with silliness, the shorthand for quick win is now low hanging fruit."
Paul, Formby, UK

12. "And looking under the bonnet."
Eve Russell, Edinburgh

13-14. "The business-speak that I abhor is pre-prepare and forward planning. Is there any other kind of preparedness or planning?"
Edward Creswick, Exeter

15-16. "The one that really gets me is pre-plan - there is no such thing. Either you plan or you don't. The new one which has got my goat is conversate, widely used to describe a conversation. I just wish people could learn to 'think outside the box' although when they put us in cubes what do they expect?"
Malcolm, Houston

17. "I work in one of those humble call centres for a bank. Apparently, what we're doing at the moment is sprinkling our magic along the way. It's a call centre, not Hogwarts."
Caroline Garlick, Ayrshire

18. "A pet hate is the utterly pointless expression in this space. So instead of the perfectly adequate 'how can I help?' it's 'how can I help in this space?' Or the classic I heard on Friday, 'How can we help our customers in this space going forward?' I think I may have caught this expression at source, as I've yet to hear it said outside my own working environment. So I'm on a personal crusade to stamp it out before it starts infecting other City institutions. Wish me luck in this space."
Colin, London

19. "The one phrase that inspires a rage in me is from the get-go."
Andy, Herts

20. "'Going forward' is only half the phrase that gets up my nose - all politicians seem to use the phrase go forward together. 'We must... we shall... let us now... go forward together'. It gives me a terrible mental image of the whole country linking arms and goose-stepping in unison, with the politicians out in front doing a straight-armed salute. Is it just me?"
Frances Smith, Toronto, Canada

21. "I am a financial journalist and am on a mission to remove words and phrases such as 360-degree thinking from existence."
Richard, London

22. "The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."
Alexander, Southampton

23. "I worked in PR for many years and often heard the most ludicrous phrases uttered by CEOs and marketing managers. One of the best was, we'd better not let the grass grow too long on this one. To this day it still echoes in my ears and I giggle to myself whenever I think about it. I can't help but think insecure business people use such phrases to cover up their inability for proper articulation."
Leon Reilly, Ealing, London

24. "Need to get all my ducks in a row now - before the five-year-olds wake up."
Mark Dixon, Bridgend

25. "Australians have started to use auspice as a verb. Instead of saying, 'under the auspices of...', some people now say things like, it was auspiced by..."
Martin Pooley, Marrickville, Australia

26. "My favourite: we've got our fingers down the throat of the organisation of that nodule. Translation = Er, no, WE sorted out the problems to cover your backside."
Theo de Bray, Kettering, UK

27. "The health service in Wales is filled with managers who use this type of language as a substitute for original thought. At meetings we play health-speak bingo; counting the key words lightens the tedium of meetings - including, most recently, my door is open on this issue. What does that mean?"
Edwin Pottle, Llandudno

28-29. "The business phrase I find most irritating is close of play, which is only slightly worse than actioning something."
Ellie, London

30. "Here in the US we have the cringe-worthy and also in addition. Then there's the ever-eloquent 'where are we at?' So far, I haven't noticed the UK's at the end of the day prefacing much over here; thank heavens for small mercies."
Eithne B, Chicago, US

31. "The expression that drives me nuts is 110%, usually said to express passion/commitment/support by people who are not very good at maths. This has created something of a cliche-inflation, where people are now saying 120%, 200%, or if you are really REALLY committed, 500%. I remember once the then-chancellor Gordon Brown saying he was 101% behind Tony Blair, to which people reacted 'What? Only 101?'"
Ricardo Molina, London, UK

32. "My least favourite business-speak term is not enough bandwidth. When an employee used this term to refuse an additional assignment, I realised I was completely 'out of the loop'."
April, Berkeley, US

33. "I once had a boss who said, 'You can't have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.' It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil."
Tim, Durban

34. "Capture your colleagues - make sure everyone attends that risk management workshop (compulsory common sense training for idiots)."
Anglowelsh, UK

35-37. "We too used to have daily paradigm shifts, now we have stakeholders who must come to the party or be left out, or whatever."
Barry Hicks, Cape Town, RSA

38. "I have taken to playing buzzword bingo when in meetings. It certainly makes it more entertaining when I am feeding it back (or should that be cascading) at work."
Ian Everett, Bolton

39. "In my work environment it's all cascading at the moment. What they really mean is to communicate or disseminate information, usually downwards. What they don't seem to appreciate is that it sounds like we're being wee'd on. Which we usually are."
LMD, London

40. "At a large media company where I once worked, the head of human resources - itself a weaselly neologism for personnel - told us that she would be cascading down new information to staff. What she meant was she was going to send them a memo. It was one of the reasons I resigned - that, and the fact that the chief exec persisted on referring to the company as a really cool train set."
Andrew, London

41. "Working for an American corporation, this year's favourite word seems to be granularity, meaning detail. As in 'down to that level of granularity'."
Chris Daniel, Anaco, Venezuela

42. "On the wall of our office we have a large signed certificate, signed by all the senior management team, in which they solemnly promise to leverage their talents, display and inspire 'unyielding integrity', and lots of other pretentious buzz-phrases like that. Clueless, the lot of them."
Chris K, Cheltenham UK

43. "After a reduction in workforce, my university department sent this notice out to confused campus customers: 'Thank you for your note. We are assessing and mitigating immediate impacts, and developing a high-level overview to help frame the conversation with our customers and key stakeholders. We intend to start that process within the week. In the meantime, please continue to raise specific concerns or questions about projects with my office via the Transition Support Center..."
Charles R, Seattle, Washington, US

44. "I was told I'd be living the values from now on by my employers at a conference the other week. Here's some modern language for them - meh. A shame as I strongly believe in much of what my employers aim to do. I refuse to adopt the voluntary sectors' client title of 'service user'. How is someone who won't so much as open the door to me using my service? Another case of using four syllables where one would do."
Upscaled Blue-Sky thinker, Cardiff

45. "Business talk 2.0 is maddening, meaningless, patronising and I despise it."
Doug, London

46. "Lately I've come across the strategic staircase. What on earth is this? I'll tell you; it's office speak for a bit of a plan for the future. It's not moving on but moving up. How strategic can a staircase really be? A lot I suppose, if you want to get to the top without climbing over all your colleagues."
Peter Walters, Cheadle Hulme, UK

47. "When a stock market is down why must we be told it is in negative territory?"
Phil Linehan, Mexico City, Mexico

48. "The particular phrase I love to hate is drill down, which handily can be used either as an adverb/verb combo or as a compound noun, ie: 'the next level drill-down', sometimes even in the same sentence - a nice bit of multi-tasking."
B, London

49. "Thanks for the impactful article; I especially appreciated the level of granularity. A high altitude view often misses the siloed thinking typical of most businesses. Absent any scheme for incentivitising clear speech, however, I'm afraid we're stuck with biz-speak."
Timothy Denton, New York

50. "It wouldn't do the pinstripers any harm to crack a smile and say what they really felt once in a while instead of trotting out such clinical platitudes. Of course a group of them may need to workshop it first: Wouldn't want to wrongside the demographic."
Trick Cyclist, Tripoli, Libya

Recruiter Speak

If you are looking for a new job, or have got a new job through a recruitment consultant then you may (as in any industry) come across a fair amount of jargon. I thought this article from ere.net would be useful if you ever wondered what a the recruiter really meant.

This list is by no means definitive, but it is a start…any suggestions or additions are greatly encouraged.

• Sourcing (v) Usage: "I sourced your resume and thought that you might be a great fit…" Definition: The entry of keywords onto a job board.
• Exciting (adj.): Usage: "We've got an exciting opportunity currently available…" Definition: An open headcount that needs to be filled as quickly as possible.
• Prescreen (n) Usage: "I'd like to set up a brief, exploratory prescreen." Definition: The conversation by which recruiters ascertain if they can afford the talent in question.
• Visibility (adj.): Usage: "This role has high visibility to all levels of management throughout the organization." Definition: The phrase most often used to describe a position with the smallest margin for error and highest turnover rate in the company.
• Growth (n): Usage: "This position is really a great growth opportunity." Definition: The naturally occurring phenomenon by which workers find fulfillment doing exactly the same job in a different company.
• Ad-hoc (adj.) Usage: "There will also be some ad-hoc projects required." Definition: A catch-all phrase used by corporations to describe the countless hours of manpower invested in activities unrelated to one's job function, generally evoked at the whim of departmental heads.
• Expectations (n) Usage: "What are your expectations for your next position?" Definition: The test commonly used during the screening process to see whether the candidate is capable of reading a job description and changing tense from third- to first-person.
• Stable (adj.) Usage: "It's a very stable business unit." Definition: When the collective tenure of a department's employees preempt any consideration of change or improvement upon the status quo.
• Reinventing (v) Usage: "We've had challenges in the past, but we're reinventing ourselves and our processes." Definition: A commonly used tactic employed by recruiters to explain recent or forthcoming layoffs (see: derecruit, reorganization, shared services, offshoring, outsourcing, et al).
• Competition (n) Usage: "You've got some pretty stiff competition for this position." Definition: A word used by recruiters to preempt disappointment for the candidate by establishing expectations upfront. Alternative definition: A tactic employed to make an extremely undesirable position appear more enticing.
• Team (n) Usage: "We're looking for a team player." Definition: The intangible qualities associated with a candidate who will not make waves and demonstrates the willingness to accept abuse by supervisors and fellow staff.
• DOE (acr.) see also depending on experience.Usage: "I am unable to provide a salary range for the position as it is DOE." Definition: Whereby a company unable to pay market rate for a position compensates by placing the blame on candidate deficiencies.
• Best practices (n): Usage: "We're a best practices organization." Phrase has not yet been defined. See meaning of life, UFOs.
• Work-life balance (phrase): Usage: "We put a real premium on work-life balance." Definition: The ratio of one's time at home to one's time at work. The smaller the ratio, the more likely the employee is paid on an hourly basis.
• Overtime (n) Usage: "There may be some slight overtime involved." Definition: An institution imposed by corporations to increase shareholder value without increasing headcount by maximizing working hours of employee population, up to and including Saturdays, holidays, and seminal life events.
• Feedback (n) Usage: "I'll provide feedback from my hiring manager as soon as I get it." Definition: Generally construed as a one- or two-word answer by which hiring managers summarily reject top candidates.
• Next steps (phrase) Usage: "We'll be in touch regarding next steps." Definition: A phrase used to put off rejecting marginal candidates for as long as possible until an offer is accepted by a more qualified party.
• References (n) Usage: "We're going to begin checking your references." Definition: The process by which a recruiter contacts previous coworkers of a potential hire from a list provided by the candidate in an attempt to bring objectivity to the hiring process.
• Background check (n) Usage: "You're our final candidate, but I can't extend an offer until your background check clears." Definition: A control imposed by corporations in order to slow recruiters' ability to extend an offer for a period of time that perfectly coincides with a candidate's extension and acceptance of other offers. Alternate definition: An industry whose practitioners continue to thrive despite the Internet's abilities to perform the same functionality at a fraction of the cost.
• Benefits (n) Usage: "We are proud to offer a comprehensive, competitive benefits package to all employees." Definition: A tactic used by corporations to attract full-time employees and entice temporary ones into menial labor.
• Offer letter (n) Usage: "Congratulations on joining our team. I'm sending over an offer letter that contains all the information you're going to need." Definition: A document or set of documents that contains all information relevant to one's employment with a company, denoting the last communication between recruiter and candidate until the candidate becomes eligible for transfer consideration.