Interesting paradigm shifts have occurred. An interview has gone from a job function to an event worthy of a phone call to mom; I no longer screen my calls, and in fact, am excited when the phone rings; and, of course, the worst of it all: I’ve become the target of a billion-dollar industry of profiteers who promise to give my search the winning edge, but they’re no longer contingency recruiters on biz dev calls. That, at least, would represent a career opportunity.

Let me be clear: I actually admire those who have figured out a way to monetize providing services to the unemployed. Most marketers would probably, conducting a SWOT analysis, point to the fact that categorically, those without jobs who are “actively looking” likely lack disposable income. But, you see, that’s capitalism in action.

Perhaps the most common service offered is professional resume writing. These services promise that, for anywhere between 400 and 800 dollars, a professional resume writer will not only critique your resume, but also work with you to create a resume guaranteed to “break through the clutter” by using better verbs to craft the “story of your career.” Corporate recruiters, apparently, have very strict guidelines for formatting on a resume, and a secret code known only to them and somehow cracked by the Professional Resume Writer’s Association. I must have missed that workshop at ERE, but I suppose so too did a lot of my colleagues, who I have seen commit such violations to code as cut and pasting resumes off of Monster into Word or forwarding horrifically misformatted LinkedIn profiles to hiring managers.

Since there seems to be an interesting amount of conspiracy theory around how recruiters read resumes (if they do at all, since apparently, talent acquisition systems are to candidates what the Meadowlands are to Jimmy Hoffa), I hope to add to the body of knowledge and present, from first-hand observation, how recruiters read resumes. And we do. Hundreds of them, every day, but there’s a method to our madness: overstaffed, overworked, we’ve developed a short-hand to get through that resume. It involves a few simple steps.

1. Recruiter tears off cover letter (or, more likely, doesn’t bother opening the attachment in the ATS). Since most resumes lead with an objective statement (which are always subjective, in a nice bit of irony), we can only handle so much generic doublespeak in one sitting. Recruiters also don’t normally read objective statements, because the objective is pretty apparent when you send in a resume … to get a job. Everything else is window dressing.
2. Recruiter looks at the candidate’s mailing address. If it’s going to require relocation or there’s any chance the commute is going to come up during salary negotiation, then on to the next candidate. Many resumes do indicate that the person will pay out of pocket to relocate and interview, which raises an immediate red flag as to why. We have enough desperation in our lives already. We’re recruiters, for heaven’s sake. This rule, of course, only applies to applicants, not passive candidates. If you’re top talent with a niche skill set, we’ll relocate you from Zanzibar, if that’s what it takes. Unless, of course, you require visa sponsorship. We have our limits, you know.
3. Recruiter looks at company name. If we, in our infinite wisdom of all companies, do not recognize the company, we will move on, because there’s so much truth that branding is everything. You’re only as good as your last company, unless you have the letters CPA, MD, or JD after your name. Conversely, if the company has been in the news as either an acquisition target or a source of corporate scandal, on to the next resume (assuming the recruiter reads anything BUT resumes, which most do not). So it goes.
4. The candidate’s most recent title must be in the same ballpark as the job for which they are being considered. There are some notable exceptions: candidates coming from the financial services industry, for instance, where we well know that interns are Assistant Vice Presidents, or consulting, where the titles are intentionally vague (Analyst, Associate, etc.) and flat so that everyone can be billed out at the same exorbitant rate. Traditionally, though, if you’re a Marketing Manager applying for a Marketing Manager job, then we’re still reading. If you’re looking for a step up, well, best of luck to you, because we promote from within, which will later be transformed into a selling point when offered a lateral move. If you’re looking to gain experience and aren’t title conscious, and are willing to lop off silly corporate constructs such as the word “Senior” or “Executive” from your title for a clearly better opportunity, you are the ideal candidate. But not for our corporate culture, which as a heavily matrixed, hierarchical organization, is obsessed with titles as a designator of worth. Without them, how would you know your place?
5. If you don’t require relo, work for a brand name company and have the same title as the position you’re applying for, then it’s on to the first listed experience on the resume. Then we become Goldilocks … too heavy or too light? Here’s a rule of thumb. Refer back to the job description. Take the number of years of experience and add two … postings are a lot like dating in reverse. If the job’s looking for five years, the recruiter is looking for seven; 10 years means 12, and so on, until you hit the 20-year mark, whereby it’s onto the next resume because you’re “overqualified.” Besides, anyone who began their career prior to 1985 likely wears cardigans, talks about Andy Rooney around the water cooler, and will complain incessantly about how cold the office is when they’re not using their Dictaphones to compose correspondence. It’s a strange new world out there … and your Facebook page does little to convince the recruiter otherwise. Although interesting Matlock widget … It’s all about millennial now, which is why recent college grads are so successful in finding immediate, meaningful employment.
6. Education check: Recruiters assign a baseline value of zero for a bachelor’s degree in a related discipline, which is to say, none of you crazy liberal or fine arts majors who spent your way doping through college while the rest of us were studying differential calculus need apply. We’re still bitter. A.A. on a resume? Take 12 steps back. Add one point for a Master’s, add two points for an M.B.A. (2.5 if it’s from a top-25 program), and subtract one point for a PhD. You’re probably either too smart to function here, or you’ve come crawling back from the Ivory Tower with a foiled plan B and the debt to prove it. Subtract the term “viable candidate” if secondary education has come from an institution whose admissions criteria involve clicking through pop-up ads or calling an 800 number on the side of the bus. While you’re obviously easy to close, we’ve got our shareholders to think about, and you’ve demonstrated little knowledge of the concept of “ROI.” The Phoenix will rise from the ashes only in myth. In reality, you should have saved those 30k for the premiums you’re about to pay on our “comprehensive” health benefits package. Oh, yeah. And we offer tuition reimbursement. Eh, too late.

Average time for these steps for an experienced corporate recruiter: 15 to 20 seconds. If you pass this initial scan, maybe then we’ll drill down past the keywords, unless you’re so impressive you’re out of our price range.

Alternatively, if you have a funny name, or if there’s obvious irony (a “Lean Executive” at Krispy Kreme, for instance, or the recent Monster headline, “Desperate Single Mom Willing To Do Anything”) or mention your work as a runway model or professional athlete, prepare to have your resume circulated to the entire staffing department.

Of course, what do I know? If I was such an expert, I’d have a job. Like being a professional resume writer.

Every industry and profession carries with it its own distinct jargon. In fact, it is the measure of recruiters’ worth to be able to pick up on the unique lexicon of the positions for which they recruit.

Being able to spout off the verbal equivalent of Google Adwords also preempts most candidates’ assumptions that as recruiters, we’re slightly above amoeba but slightly beneath bonobo monkeys on the evolutionary ladder. (The monkeys do admittedly win by default, though like recruiters, they have been known to eat their young, although most of us do this figuratively through the invention of the concept of “entry-level” employment.)

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the banalities of “corporate speak,” those words such as synergy, deliverables, scalable, and, my personal favorite, paradigm shift, which sounds suspiciously like a Led Zeppelin cover band or a Tom Clancy novel.

Additionally, there is a preponderance of words that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever to anyone outside of a specialized functional area.

As an accounting and finance recruiter, I am able to speak quite convincingly about Tier One ERPs, f(x) hedging, and econometrics. In fact, I can come across sounding a bit like a wonk, which I will consider a professional asset, given my inability to do simple arithmetic.

I feel a little bit like an expatriate; I’m able to speak the language with some proficiency, but throw in an idiom or colloquialism, and I’m rooting around for my dictionary.

Meaningless Catch-Phrases Take Off

Slowly but surely, these buzzwords have trickled into the public consciousness because most of these words are reserved for candidates specifically. The overwhelming majority of our etymology, in fact, was specifically created for less-than-desirable candidates.

As recruiters, it is vocational anathema to create a negative impression on a candidate, or to in any way create a negative reflection on the organization we represent. A successful recruiter strives to make each candidate feel like his or her interaction with the company was a successful one, even if it was, in fact, the worst disaster since the Hindenburg.

To prevent further confusion, I’ve provided a quick guide for candidates to decipher recruiter-speak with the hope that it eases the search process by providing the subtext of the terminology recruiters use the most.

While corporate recruiters are honest, we are never brutally honest. Our errors are of omission, and we tend to accentuate the positive, whether in presenting an opportunity, rejecting a candidate, or even closing an offer.

A Growing List

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.

Please forgive me. You already know me…by proxy, in the very least.

From the pages of Us Weekly (the generality implied in this paragon of journalism’s very name) to the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership (which, unlike the former, sadly discounts the impact of celebrities eating salad on the collective psyche of the nation), I’ve been psychologically deconstructed and catalogued more extensively than any personage in the annals of history. I am the subject of hundreds of articles, dozens of books, and won Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 2006. Not bad for someone barely old enough to rent a car.

You see, I am a millennial, or a member of Generation Y, or whatever else you want to label me. It doesn’t really matter; those of us born from 1978 to 1995, the accepted range for the above categorizations, almost unilaterally ignore such labels (I’ll refer to my generation as “millennials” for the sake of this article, but only because it sounds kind of cool, like an army of androids in some sci-fi flick).

This doesn’t seem to stop the world from trying. Corporations, in their nonstop quest to attract top talent, are among the worst offenders. Many of us feel like Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction: You want us bad, which is kind of flattering, but recently, it’s gotten out of hand and is kind of creepy.

Any effort to study my generation en masse and pin down our inner workings misses the point entirely. In fact, we share a single commonality. And here, presented to you, is the key to understanding millennials: We have no collective identity. There you go. None. Our only shared motivation is, at its heart, to be unique. Try to lump us into a convenient group, and you’ve already failed at the single most important thing to us: the retention of our identity as individuals.

You’d never know that from the volumes written about how to attract and retain top millennial performers, recent college graduates, and professional up-and-comers. Here, we are painted in the broadest brushstrokes possible, and recruiters and corporations are widely tailoring their messages and redoubling their efforts to position themselves as “cutting edge” and “cool” places to work.

Advance these programs with caution, because many of us see this as transparent pandering, and it is more likely to turn us off than actually interest us. We don’t want to sit at the kiddy table, and the more a recruiting message focuses on how an organization nurtures and grows young talent, or is “hip” to what millennial candidates want (stated or unstated), it often has an unwanted side effect.

By and large, thought leadership is correct in assuming that we do not want to pay our dues and have an unearned sense of entitlement. By differentiating us at the attraction/interview process from our prospective colleagues, or by even having these programs in existence, the message we hear is less “we understand your wants and needs” and more “there are enough people your age here to justify these initiatives, and there’s a regimented program in place that is likely to strip you of much of your autonomy and individualism.”

In the recruitment process, the onus should be placed not on how the corporation has shifted its practices and values to reflect the presumed values of millennials, but rather on spelling out how that candidate’s unique experiences and talents would tangibly contribute to the organization, and how the position itself helps the larger organization function. You better make it about us, not you, in the interview process, and by that I mean your value proposition is no longer, “what can the company do for you” but rather, “here’s what you can do to make the company better.” We’re not opposed to hard work, as long as we understand how our little “siloed” tasks serve a greater purpose and are going to be recognized.

Make sure that your recruiting message is focused on immediate learning and development opportunities in the role that the candidate is interviewing for, i.e., the ability to acquire new and in-demand skill sets. By setting forth a codified and regimental career path or touting career mapping (a selling point for many top organizations), the intended message is often heard by the candidate as “no matter how bright you are, no matter how much you exceed expectations, there’s an entrenched system for advancement and we don’t make exceptions.”

No matter what the advancement path in your company looks like, informal recognition and the ability to contribute beyond the narrow dictates of a job description are more effective value propositions to us than long-term rewards. Raised in an age of downsizing and restructuring (terms many of us have learned from our parents the hard way), millennials expect no true loyalty from corporations, and we expect that companies implicitly desire none from us.

The most effective value proposition to the millennial candidate isn’t selling the organization, it’s selling the perception of the role’s prestige against the marketplace. In other words, the best way to attract the millennial worker is by positioning how the role will look on a resume when the candidate is ready to move on. We have no realistic expectation that we will have long tenures in our jobs; we expect to change companies and roles, and to do this often.

The key, then, is not separation but, rather, inclusion. The only reason we act differently is that you are treating us differently. Starting out on a career is still the first rite of true adulthood and independence for a huge majority of us, so we expect to be treated as adults. And, reports of us as spoiled, arrogant brats have been greatly exaggerated. The much maligned “helicopter parent,” for instance, is my favorite anecdote and is well consigned to the dustbin of urban legends, with a place next to alligators breeding in the sewer system.

Think about when you were graduating college. This much has not changed: We want to distance ourselves from our parents as much as possible, and we are mortified at the very thought of their involvement in our professional lives. Our parents are not “The Greatest Generation.” Our parents, instead, transformed ABBA into pop icons. They voluntarily went to discos and drove us around in station wagons with wood-paneled interiors. In other words, we don’t give much credence to their tastes. The job search is no exception to this rule.

So, we’re really not a separate species after all, and, like Britney Spears (who is still a better musician than any member of ABBA), are unworthy of the attention heaped upon us in correlation to our accomplishments. But feel free to continue.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent the views of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. nor any of its employees or agents.