"Does your heart beat for the claims world?"

It was written in a management magazine: Employment references should be read from bottom to top; the codes are built in at the end. But: codes don't actually exist, because they are bad, say political correctness and labor law in chorus. But there are certainly plenty of codes at the opposite end of the employment process, namely in the application and advertising of jobs. It is simply unbelievable how shamelessly even the most important companies - self-advertisers and personnel consultants alike - make public their lack of clarity of thought, their need for concealment and their inner mendacity.
Samples from "Alpha" from August 23, 2008 and adequate attempts to translate the codes into German:

• Senior Project Manager Pharma: "You interact with foresight and pragmatism at the interfaces." (= "In the daily chaos, you muddle through as it comes or as your boss prefers.")
• IT Interface Manager Securities and Trading: "You are the link between the product or process manager in the specialist area and our internal ICT organization. You are responsible for incident/problem management." (= "We need someone we can blame if something goes wrong.")
• Asset Manager Real Estate m/f: "You recognize opportunities and risks holistically and propose the necessary measures to sustainably optimize returns and performance." (= "You are a disgusting bean counter and drive up rents wherever you can to make our shareholders even richer.")

But even when it comes to management positions in public administration, there is a lot of waffling:

• Head of the Cantonal Office for Culture: "Together with the specialist managers, you develop concepts and perspectives for the cantonal cultural policy, implement corresponding projects consistently and pragmatically and are responsible for the smooth and transparent coordination of the diverse aspects of the individual cultural institutions of the office." (= "You are the tamer in a predator's cage and should keep the whole greedy gang of museum directors, conductors, art prize winners and other subsidy recipients in check so that there are as few political lambasts as possible.")

But often what is not said is also important:

• Secretary General 80 %-100 % of the Cantonal Administration of Justice: "You can look forward to a varied and interesting role with plenty of scope for development. You will be able to follow justice policy developments in the Canton of Bern at close quarters."
  (= "... but you have nothing to say about it. There's just a lot of work to do, but we don't yet know what it looks like in detail; after all, it's a new job.")

High-end buzzwords also prevail in the claims that precede the respective search messages:

• "Your focus - our goal" (= "We don't know exactly what we want to say either, but focus is always good.")
• "Navigator wanted" (= "... because we are constantly flying blind.")
• "Reliability and care have a future."
  (= "... we just had the opposite." A Liechtenstein bank is looking for a "Corporate Actions/Income Specialist", whatever that may be).

And there is constant traffic on the linguistic commonplaces:

• "You want to develop?"
• "Shape the future with us!"
• "Expanding possibilities!"
• "In the future - you!"
• "For new perspectives" (at least five times)
• "Shaping things to come"

I find it really refreshing when someone (on closer inspection, it's a ...) tries the emotional route:

• "Does your heart beat for the claims world?"

As we all know, every dog has a name. But what the jobs are called today ...! "Key account managers" are being sought by the dozen. But what does that mean?

• Middle Marketing Targeting Advisor
• Senior Rollout Manager
• Manager Consumer Insights
• Head of Workplace Consulting

I praise the modest advertisement at the bottom right of page 88.

• "Kinderkrippe Bergdietikon is looking for a Nursery Nurse (60-100%) from September 1/October 1, 2008. (...) Very nice nursery, good development opportunities, nice parents, good earnings." All clear, all said - and in a space-saving and friendly tone.

And to all the other formulation artists, the verbiage virtuosos and the glossy talkers among the advertisement copywriters, let us once again burn good old Ludwig Wittgenstein into our hard drives: "What you can't talk about, you should keep quiet about."