employeeze

With the recent layoffs at Microsoft, there are a lot more people in Seattle hitting the pavement looking for jobs. Having over ten years of MS corporate culture under my belt, I am reminded of the Software Giant’s (the euphemism agencies use to describe contract jobs there without mentioning the name) *love* of acronyms. Microsoft is hardly unique in that respect.

So, this piece of “sage wisdom” from yours truly applies to any resume or conversations my audience may  encounter. The only acronyms that you should be using are industry standard terms. For example, if you are in accounting, GL, AP/AR are all acceptable commonplace terms. Software engineering use of SOAP is understandable. Any recruiter that doesn’t know what an ATS or HRIS is has no business being a recruiter.

However, to anyone outside of Microsoft, if I said I was the CG Recruiter for E & D, that means nothing. Think very carefully about *company* acronyms versus industry acronyms. In your resume, it is permissible to spell it out once then use the acronym after that. An example (from above):

Candidate Generation (CG) Recruiter for  the Entertainment and Devices (E & D) team.

 Remember, it is safest to assume that your audience is not an expert in your field, so communicate *to* that audience. 

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