‘Passionate’, ‘motivated’ and ‘communication skills’ appear in over half of UK job ads, according to a survey analysing more than 500,000 UK job ads in March carried out by job search website Adzuna.co.uk.
In total, 90% of job ads contain at least one of the 10 most commonly occurring ‘buzzwords’ identified by the survey. The full list comes below the ad:
- Communication skills (seen in 20% of ads)
- Passionate (18%)
- Motivated (12%)
- Organised (8%)
- Track record (7%)
- Innovative (6%)
- Dynamic (5%)
- •Proactive (5%)
- Creative (5%)
- Enthusiastic (4%)
Accenture, the NHS and Sainsbury’s are the found to be the most frequent users of such words in the UK, with 95% of job ads from these employers using at least four of these.
Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, says: “It’s quite remarkable how many UK companies are determined to find the same thing… Advertisers who can strike a vein of originality with their prose can definitely stand out from the noise in such a competitive job market.”
On the subject of original prose, Adzuna also finds 596 UK employers looking for a ‘guru’ (and willing to renumerate them with an average salary of nearly £46k), with 71 other job ads looking for a ‘ninja’. Other openings included positions for: a rockstar, super hero, wizard, legend, supremo, boffin, as well as an overlord and a jedi.
