Corporate-speak cheat sheet: 16 expressions to know and avoi

This week, Yahoo! Finance published an article on 16 office buzzwords to avoid. If, like me, you roll your eyes at what Marlys Harris calls “business gobbledygook” (even if you’ve unwittingly absorbed some of it), then you’ll enjoy her recap of some of the most overused and least-loved clichés, among them:

Skill Set or Fit: Qualifications, generally modified by the words “wrong” or “bad,” and most often used by Human Capital staffers as an excuse for not hiring somebody. Example: “His inability to speak in tongues obviously makes his skill set wrong for the litigator position.”

Knowledge Economy: An environment in which a person has run up $150,000 in student loans to pay for a law degree only to see jobs exported to India whose citizens are apparently very knowledgeable about the U.S. legal system. Example: “The best job in the knowledge economy is plumbing because nobody with an advanced degree knows how to use Drano.”

For more wince-inducing expressions, check out those submitted by readers of Harris' original blog post at CBS MoneyWatch.com. Then let’s circle back at the end of the day and compare throughput on the most impactful takeaways.

[hat tip to Above the Law]

- posted by vera