A word is born
May 27th 2009 23:05
Recruitment companies, like property agencies, have developed an industry vernacular and style. Or, to put it another way, they manage to mangle the language in their own ways.
It's not all bad. The property people at times show a hint of humour. They did, it must be acknowledged, give us the term "renovator's delight", which has gone into the book as a term meaning "hovel". Irony is the highest form of humour.
Back to mangling, however. An Australian head hunter — oops, sorry, executive recruitment consultancy — has today placed an advertisement for a company requiring "an experienced bid writer to value add to their professional team".
Added value is an established economic concept (since you asked, added value equals sales minus purchases minus labour costs minus capital costs) which has been transmuted and popularised as a buzz term by the same caring, sharing investment banking community which gave us the global financial crisis.
Adding value in this sense is mostly doing something you should have done anyway and then sticking a label on it.
To value add to something is to conjure a transitive verb where no such verb existed before. A word is born!
Now we need a committee and a month of learned discussion as to whether or not it should be hyphenated.
image: www.deliciousdelicious.com
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Comment by Morgan Bell
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Comment by Chris Champion
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Can't we just lock it away and forget about it? Pretend it never say the light of day? Please, pretty please.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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Comment by Janet Collins
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A friend of mine was saying a few years ago that you can't even understand what the jobs that are advertised actually are most of the time. They change titles and use lingo that only they can understand.
Think about this one simple one:
A Personnel Manager became a Human Resources Director and now they are often called Talent Managers or Directors. And that's just one job title.
As for the "value add", they would hardly be employing someone to "devalue" the team
Comment by Chris Champion
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I'd rather they devalue the team than the language