Your place of work might be an equal opportunity employer, but if you want to fill a job in Seattle in 2017, skip “eoe” and go with “gender identity” to express your progressiveness.
Whether it’s Amazon or Expedia, Facebook or Google, companies are going after talent from the same pool of job seekers. And in that ultra-competitive landscape of booming, tech-driven Seattle, words matter, according to Textio, the startup that analyzes language and whether it’s doing its job in job listings.
In a new report, the company looks at what phrases are attracting the best job candidates this year. Since January 2017, Textio found, people have applied to jobs containing phrases from its “fastest movers” list in record numbers. Because of this, jobs containing those words — such as “self starter” and “data driven” — fill much faster.
The “biggest losers” side of the equation — where companies seek “management skills” and “technology solutions,” among others — is a place where words become “corporate jargon,” Textio said, calling the terms straight out of a 2017 remake of “Office Space.”
Textio said its predictive engine analyzes almost 10 million new job posts (and outcomes) each month, and that the engine is “constantly learning the language patterns that make job posts work right now to attract qualified, diverse candidates.”
It might be worth looking at that list alongside the listings for any jobs your company is currently looking to fill. Until next year, anyway, when the language shifts again.
