“I’m a real go-getter who always thinks outside the box, demonstrates thought leadership, and proactively motivates myself!” If this sentence made you cringe, you’re not alone. These phrases come from the new CareerBuilder survey on the best and worst résumé terms.
The company surveyed 2,201 hiring managers and HR people to come up with the best of the best and the worst of the worst.
To see the list, click here: Hiring Challenged? Sift for These 17 Worst (and 15 Best) Resume Phrases
Personally, I blame hiring managers themselves for these “buzzwords” showing up on resumes.
Almost everyone of them, with the exception of “best of breed” (I’m having hard time using that in a sentence outside the New York AKC Westminster dog show), has been used by a manager – especially the “worst” ones – at some point in time. Maybe not on a resume, but definitely in talking to or about staff. Many of these phrases also show up in job descriptions!
So, I agree it would be best to avoid them on your resume; I also love the fact that you call managers out on this stuff as well – thank you!
Thanks! Yeah, I think if managers are rejecting people simply because they used a phrase like this, then they are not doing a good job of hiring.