The Ultimate Guide to Condescending Job Ads

Dear recruiters and employers of the world (aka “our overlords”),

I write on behalf of all job seekers (aka “your peons”).

In these times of “uncertainty”, we can often feel tempted to see what else is “out there”.

No, I’m not talking about intelligent life. I’m talking about the job ads you write.

Actually, no, I’m talking about intelligent life…

Listen, your job ads are becoming more and more banal, and it’s getting harder and harder to discern what it is you’re actually offering prospective employees.

So, in my desire to help clarify the situation for all job seekers, I have done my best to accurately translate/interpret what all the fancy keywords in your job ads mean.

You’re welcome.

Definition of Key Terms

unique

A casual search of the word “unique” on one of Australia’s leading job search websites comes up with 8,513 “unique” jobs. That’s a lot of “unique”.

If your job ad contains this word, there’s a good chance that there is nothing unique about the job you’re offering.

dynamic

Yeah, no. Your job is definitely NOT dynamic. You know how I know that?

Here’s one of the definitions for dynamic:

“Moving, or having high velocity.”

Unless you’re setting your employees on fire and watching them run around the office screaming obscenities at high velocity, chances are that there is nothing “dynamic” about your job.

In fact, it’s probably more accurate to suggest that what you’re ACTUALLY looking for is an employee who will sit at a desk for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Yeah, you see, that’s actually called “static”. It’s also called “being sedentary”, and is one of the leading causes of many a delightful health problem…

opportunity

Technically speaking, EVERY job ad is an “opportunity” – an opportunity for someone. To be employed. By you.

Scary, isn’t it?

But when YOU use the word “opportunity”, it sounds like you’re trying to make your job appear better than it is. Chances are that what you’re offering is definitely NOT an opportunity, unless you consider shovelling horse manure to be an “opportunity”.

multi-faceted role

Firstly, learn to spell “multifaceted”. There is no hyphen. That’s a facet…

Besides, what job ISN’T multifaceted?! Perhaps writing job ads…

exciting

A casual search of one of Australia’s leading job sites comes up with 25,441 results for “exciting”. That’s a lot of excitement. Can you feel it? If it gets any more exciting, I may have to start “multitasking”…

But seriously, “exciting” in a job ad means “definitely NOT exciting”. Nothing about your job is remotely exciting, and you seem to have a disturbing view of what constitutes “exciting” in your life (eg. you probably find filing cabinets sexually arousing).

rockstar

You’re definitely not looking for a rockstar employee, unless you consider Ozzie Osborne to be a great role model for your employees (put away that quad-bike before someone gets hurt…).

Seriously though, your prospective employees will be doing tasks that NO rockstar has EVER done in their ENTIRE lives. Case in point: I’m pretty sure Mick Jagger never had to create spreadsheets and file insurance claims. But I haven’t read his autobiography, so I could be wrong…

ninja

You’re definitely not looking for a ninja employee either. In fact, chances are that your prospective employee will WANT to be a ninja, just so they can impale you with a ninja star after you’ve just called yet another pointless meeting…(ninjas don’t like meetings. In fact, they don’t like anything that involves fluorescent office lighting)

But seriously, the last person who decided to work with ninjas was a female journalist called April O’Neil. And we all know how that worked out. She was kidnapped by the Shredder (multiple times, in fact), and lost a substantial amount of productive working time in the process. That’s just not good for business.

hit the ground running

What the hell does this actually mean?? Do you mean that you’re too lazy to offer any relevant training to your employees, or do you mean that you are LITERALLY throwing your employees out the window of your fourth floor office in some bizarre initiation ritual??

well presented

Nothing says “we put style over substance” more than a job “requirement” like this. Besides, “well presented”?? Unless you’re looking for a dessert, this really doesn’t apply…

well groomed

Ah, yes – “well groomed”. Who uses the word “groomed” nowadays, seriously (besides pedophiles and their prosecutors)?

Or is “well groomed” your codeword for “attractive female”?

Ah, I see what you did there.

punctual

Apparently you will be treating your employees like school kids. So I assume you’ll be timing our bathroom breaks too, right? No dumping on company time…

attention to detail

This one is a doozy. Usually it means you want your prospective employees to pay attention to the WRONG details – you know, all those pointless, finicky tasks that don’t actually help anyone make any substantial progress on anything.

Basically, you’re looking for someone who is happy to spend half a work day ensuring they pick the right font for your departmental memo (please NOT COMIC SANS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!).

Now THAT’S attention to detail! HIRED!!

excellent written and verbal communication skills

You would assume that any recruiter/employer who writes this as a requirement would ensure their own job ad is well written, right? After all, that’s simple “attention to detail”, isn’t it?

Yeah, well, you’d be wrong.

So get your act together first, learn some basic punctuation, grammar, and spelling skills (or is that “skillz”), and THEN you might be justified to ask your prospective employees for the same in return.

self-motivated

This one is somewhat ironic. Surely, you don’t want your prospective employees to be TOO self-motivated…otherwise they’ll probably take over your job within 12 months (or even minutes, once they realise how incompetent you really are).

By the way, if your prospective employees are any more self-motivated than this, they will probably be launching their own businesses to compete with yours. So get your resume ready. You might need it soon…

multitasking

This one is important. You want your prospective employees to be be able to make a spreadsheet look pretty, process that paperwork Gary from accounting gave them, while answering the phone, trying to block out all the noise from your “open plan” office, and reading pointless emails you’ve CCed them in on – all at the same time.

This definitely equals a productive environment. You should receive a medal. This is far better than looking for focussed employees who are able to fully concentrate on one task at a time, and do it more accurately and efficiently as a result.

work well under pressure

I assume this means you’re pretty unorganised, so there’s going to be a LOT of pressure…and it’s going to be our fault if we don’t fix your problems on time, even though you’re the source of most of the delays, right?

hard working

So I assume being productive, efficient, and effective is not a requirement, right? As long as we are “hard working”, then we’re allowed to be incompetent? Cool.

“can do” attitude

Surely there is no more condescending way to describe your prospective job candidate than this?

Just what does “can do” mean? Oh, I know. It means you need an employee who won’t question your downright moronic and ineffective company procedures. Right. Got it. “Self-motivated” with a “can do” attitude…makes sense.

competitive salary

What you’re trying to say with this is “we’ll try to make sure we don’t pay you too much more than our competitors would.”

In fact, the lower the better, so that you can “compete”, whatever that means… (remind us why we’re supposed to care about that, by the way. Oh, I know why – BECAUSE YOU’RE A CHEAPSKATE).

goal oriented

This means that you don’t intend to pay us very much. After all, since we’re so preoccupied with being oriented by goals, we’ll forget about that important ingredient – a decent salary. Silly us!

lucky applicant

If your prospective employee calls getting their nightmare job “lucky”, then yes, I guess you can call him/her the “lucky applicant”.

I think the above pretty much covers 99% of the job ads you write.

If, of course, I’m wrong about any of these definitions, please do let me know. If filling out the contact form on my website is a little too complicated for you (which I suspect it probably is), feel free to flash the bat signal instead, or whatever you do to attract ninjas.

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,

Adam Wozniak
Unique, self-motivated can-do-er who is good at multitasking (I wrote this while I was on the can! Not on company time, of course…uh oh, looks like it hit the ground running…)