
When everyone suddenly started using “impressed” as an opener - ardme
https://www.iteachrecruiters.com/blog/when-everyone-started-using-impressed-as-an-opener/
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Ididntdothis
A lot of corporate communication is people copying other people’s style.
Around 18 months ago people at my company started calling people “resources”.
Now everybody does it and doesn’t even notice how weird this is. Things like
“I have talked to that resource”. Then there was another time when all
managers suddenly said “I want to challenge that”. That lasted two years and
then it went away. Another one was to ask ”are we aligned?” Lasted maybe a
year before it fell out of fashion

I am sure the “impressed” thing will go away too in a while.

~~~
hogFeast
Lucy Kellaway used to write a lot about this, in regards to corporate
communications. It was hilarious, and a little depressing too.

My first "real" job involved writing a lot of reports. And I found out, to my
initial surprise, that all the reports were copy and pasted from other
reports. I remember doing my first report, and my boss pretty much lost his
mind (this was my first week...he called me an f'ing c@@t) when I suggested
that the report could be cut down and made more suitable for the client. Ofc,
my boss was semi-literate, terrified of writing, and the threat of litigation
(this was a heavily regulated business, regulators would likely read these
reports) held no horror relative to the threat of having to write (he also
told me later that the longer the report, the less likely clients were to read
it...he managed $100m of other people's money).

Put briefly: people are afraid of having to think for themselves, it is easier
to communicate in nonsense when the risk of other people finding out you don't
know what you are doing is so emotionally severe. This goes all the way from
the mail room to the board room.

Words I hate: overuse of super (common in tech), leverage (outside of the
financial meaning), learnings (very hot a few years ago but cooled
significantly), huddle, staffer, analyst (presumably they will be calling my
trashman a refuse transportation analyst at some point), revert, network (it
still isn't okay)...I am sure there are more.

Incidentally, one game I used to play at the above mentioned job was to
sprinkle obscure but clever-sounding words in my conversations with my boss
and see how many he would start using...simpler times, simple joys :)

~~~
chiph
So you weren't able to fulfill his ask?

(another misuse of a verb as a noun)

~~~
brianmcc
Or take away any valuable "learnings"?

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fizx
Hello from Sequoia Capital!

Hi, I'm a senior human acquisition engineer with [some dumb startup] who just
raised an A round with Sequoia (yet to announce, please keep confidential).

Talking E2E for a second, would you like to hear about the great work we're
doing?

(1 day later)

Hey, bumping this up.

~~~
nullbyte
_" human acquisition engineer"_

Yeah, I'd say that's pretty accurate

~~~
maest
The equivalent for this for finance is recruiters having their job title as
"Head of Quant and Research" (or similar) on linkedin.

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wiseleo
I really... really... REALLY hate "reach out".

Tempted to add it as a filter, should eliminate a lot of email.

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jaredtn
The main issue here is that a single buzzword won’t give your pitch the punch
it needs. Specific, enticing detail is what pulls people in. Recruiters are
loath to share too much, so these messages just become more of the same.

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nullbyte
I understand your frustration with recruiters in general (those pesky
bastards!), but do you really think using the word "impressive" is so bad?

Sometimes it's just the right word for the situation. Sure, they'd probably be
better off whipping out the old Thesaurus, but ultimately this seems like a
non-issue.

~~~
soup10
Hey I saw your resume and it looks mediocre but we can probably place you
anyway and get decent recruiting fee, want to chat?

~~~
perl4ever
That would be a great opener if it was credible, as far as I'm concerned. The
question is how do you establish the credibility?

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mrspeaker
"Impressed" is the "blazingly fast" of recruiters.

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sergiotapia
everything is a got damn sales pitch dammit

~~~
celticninja
*God damn

~~~
shantly
No, "got damn" is perfectly cromulent.

~~~
celticninja
Perhaps if you are German gott damn is acceptable.

~~~
shantly
Gul dern, then, if you prefer.

