Don’t say “salesperson” but “client advisor”, not “recruitment officer” but “talent acquisition specialist”: on job sites, abstruse job titles flourish using English slang, considered a guarantee of modernity but with the risk of “blurring” reality. Whether it’s Pôle emploi, Indeed or Linkedin, a quick glance is enough to find proposals such as “Inside Sales Representative” (seller), “social listening consultant” (social media watch) or even “customer success manager” ( customer relations).
Sometimes the job description helps to see more clearly, but in some cases, it is still just as dark for ordinary mortals. The “human resources director” sought by a recruitment company, for example, will have to “drive the transformation of the group at the service of growth by embodying renewal”. A “scrum master” will have to “bring to life the values of agility” of a consulting group… Eric Gras, recruitment expert at Indeed France, points out that the trend has “clearly accelerated” in recent years.
In some cases, due to globalization, anglicism has become the norm, but in others, “not super sexy” positions are scammed, which doesn’t increase the number of targeted apps, so “it doesn’t benefit anyone.” “, said. AFP. De facto, derrière une offer “d’Office & happiness manager”, le descriptif du post montre que le salarié sera chargé du standard et de l’accueil… A post from “Building & property officer” mas que un job de gardien de Universitary residence.
Recruitment difficulties
Like Pôle emploi, which advocates “clear and precise” titles, Indeed recommends that its clients speak French. “But the main recommendation is to speak the candidate’s language,” says Eric Gras. However, for certain professions such as “office manager” that manage office life, it is precisely this designation that is used by employees in their investigations.
For Jean-François Amadieu, professor of human resource management at Paris 1, “this vocabulary used systematically in management is becoming modern”. “As soon as you say it in English, it’s louder,” but “it’s often incomprehensible, almost ridiculous.” Semiotician Mariette Darrigrand further notes that it is often “globishvery bad English, Newspeak.”
In addition to the idea of modernity, “there is also a desire to seduce because today it is very difficult to recruit. Saying ‘client advisor’ instead of ‘salesperson’ is the perfect example. It’s the same idea as ‘surface technician’ for ‘cleaning lady’, but we went to the globishDespite everything, these abstruse terms may also correspond to “a new function that did not exist before” such as the “impact director”, responsible for evaluating the impact of the company’s activity in terms of ecology, says Jean-François Amadieu .
In a context of tensions in the labor market, the issue is less anecdotal than it seems. “The paradox is that today we have 50% more job offers than before Covid” and that there are hiring difficulties, that is why “I tell recruiters: whoever does not understand the title or click on the offer,” he stresses. Eric. herb
A “smokescreen”
“If these employers want to attract different candidates”, the obscure titles “is not very inclusive”, also warns Jean-François Amadieu, while lamenting the fact that “many do not have the concern to attract the older ones” in the conversion. In addition, for Sophie Binet, General Secretary of Executives of the CGT (Ugict), this “poses a problem” because “it blurs the real content of the post, the classification to which it refers”, with the risk of ending up with “people who she can be good at everything because we don’t know why she’s hired.
It makes you dream, it drives you away”, but it is “a kind of” smoke screen “, adds the sociologist at work Danièle Linhart. For Mariette Darrigrand, these high-sounding titles are also “a reflection of the great schools”: they spread a vocabulary “to attract parents because if they are told that their child will have a sales license in three years, that does not make them sign the check!”. Meanwhile, for those who find their title a bit bland, there are generators like siliconvalleyjobtitlegenerator.tumblr.com or bullshitjob.com/title.
Source: BFM TV
