Mar 04

How better business writing can help your career

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills, Uncategorized, Writing Skills No Comments »

“Number of applications for this position: 100+.” This is something you commonly read on popular online job portals these days. So whether you are actively looking for a job or are considering a step up in your career, the ability to sell and market yourself effectively is more important than ever in these tough economic times. Written documents like your CV or covering letter still play a crucial part in this process, because they are often the first sight a recruiter or potential employer has of you. Improving your business writing skills will significantly contribute to making yourself positively stand out from the crowd of other applicants.

Business Woman on laptop 2 quavondo i How better business writing can help your career

© istockphoto.com/quavondo

What is more, social media platforms have added a whole new dimension to the range of information about you that is available to recruiters and employers. However, they offer you additional opportunities to market yourself effectively and can help to enhance your chances, provided that your profile and all activities that are linked to it such as group memberships, posts and discussions represent you in a professional way. A sloppily scribbled post or discussion comment will not show you in a good light but a well written and structured profile can be a stepping stone to new career opportunities.
So how do the general principles of good business writing apply to writing applications and to creating a professional online profile?

1. Consider what your reader requires
The purpose of your application documents and online profile is to provide an overview of your relevant qualifications and skills. Your application documents should clearly match the requirements given in the job specification, so that recruiters and potential employers can quickly check whether you ‘tick all the boxes’. Reading time for each document is limited, as it is not unusual to receive a huge number of applications.

When writing your online profile think about what key skills and qualifications are crucial for the industry or organisation you wish to work in and highlight these. A catchy summary containing relevant key terms will help to attract the right people to your profile.

2. Be clear and concise.
To cater for the specific needs of your reader, you have to master the art of short and succinct writing. Waffling and lack of focus in your covering letter and/or CV are likely to have an impact on whether your application lands on the right pile regardless of your skills and experience. It is not easy to cram a lot of relevant information into a short paragraph, but the harder you work on writing succinctly the easier and quicker it will be for your reader to grasp the relevant information. And you will also demonstrate your writing skills.

3. Put some thought into structure and layout
Structure also contributes to clarity and conciseness and the information you give about your experience, skills and qualifications needs to be connected and arranged in a logical way. You might think that the chronological order of your work experience or education dictates the structure of your CV. However, depending on the job description and employer, it does make sense to reconsider your structure. For instance, if you are applying for a job where international experience is crucial, highlight yours separately under a clear heading. This helps the reader to spot this information at one glance instead of having to skim read your whole CV.

4. Show, don’t tell
Provide evidence of your skills and give concrete examples. Use numbers and figures if you can to back up your arguments. For example, if you highlight your leadership qualities not only give the number of people in your team, but also say what they achieved under your management. Even if you cannot provide exact figures, it is still better to state that your implementation of an induction plan contributed to more effective training of new employees than simply mentioning that you implemented one. This clearly demonstrates how employers will profit from hiring you and how you can add value to their organisation.

5. Aim for perfection
Your CV and covering letter are not only a summary of your skills and qualifications, they also convey a first impression of the quality of your work. If, for example, you claim in your covering letter that you have a keen eye for detail, but have typos or punctuation mistakes in your documents, you are clearly undermining your credibility. Your application documents are your ultimate selling tool and therefore need to be impeccable. Therefore, ask someone who is proficient with grammar and punctuation to proofread your documents. A spell checker will not discover unclear formulations and you are likely to become ‘blind’ to your own mistakes after having read your own writing repeatedly.

6. Keep them up-to-date
Information stagnates quickly in the digital age. Three months may not seem like a long period of time but on a job portal a CV uploaded three months ago is likely to go unnoticed due to the huge amount of more recently uploaded applications from other job seekers. It is important not only to keep your documents themselves up to date but also to keep them fresh in the search cycle. You can keep your online profile current and up-to-date on social media platforms by posting interesting and relevant articles or by initiating and taking part in discussions. However, always remember to check what you post carefully to avoid creating a negative impression.

Never underestimate the time and effort it takes to create professional and well written application documents or maintain a dynamic online profile. However, the time and effort you spend investing in your business writing can make all the difference in helping you to land your dream job.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2013

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Feb 01

How to Write Winning Business Proposals

Business Writing Skills, Writing Skills No Comments »

In the current economic climate it is more important than ever that organisations increase their win-rate and sell more products and services to more clients. Often, one of the first steps towards making a new sale is writing an effective proposal. This is your opportunity to showcase not only your products and services but also the professionalism, credibility and effectiveness of your organisation and it warrants spending considerable time and effort making sure you ‘hit the spot’ and give your organisation the best chance of winning new business.

Business Meeting 12LajosRepasi i Copy How to Write Winning Business Proposals

© istockphoto.com/LajosRepasi

Follow our five step plan for writing winning business proposals and you should see an increase in the success rate of your bids and proposals.

1. Know your buyer: More important than anything else, make sure you have an in-depth understanding of your customer and before you even start writing be clear about what they require and what will be the winning factors for them. Hopefully you will have already had the opportunity to speak with them before getting started on your proposal but if not, ask for a few minutes on the phone or email a list of questions. And it goes without saying that you should do your own research on the client organisation; see if they have appeared in the news recently and familiarise yourself with their website so that you understand their brand ethos and values as well as practicalities such as locations, range of services and key personnel.

2. Focus on your solution: The majority of readers will be most interested in what you can do for them, how you propose to deliver your solution and how much it will cost so make sure this information is clearly defined and forms the core of your proposal. Show them that you understand their challenges and can offer a targeted solution. Make sure you explicitly highlight the benefits of your solution and if appropriate illustrate with samples or extracts.

3. Demonstrate your credibility: Potential customers will be more convinced of the value of your products and services if you can give concrete examples of how other similar organisations have benefitted from your services. If the competition has bought then they should be buying too!

4. Speak your buyer’s language: As a general rule of thumb, use every day language that is easy to understand yet persuasive. Your reader is more likely to be won over by clear and simple language rather than complex structure or impenetrable terminology. Unless of course you know that your proposal will be read by technical experts in which case your proposal should use the language they understand. This is with the proviso that many proposals are read by multiple readers who may not all share the same level of technical expertise.

5. Appeal to all their senses: We don’t all necessarily process information in the same way and successful proposals reflect this by displaying information and using language that appeals to different processing styles – or to all the senses. Make sure that your proposal is visually attractive using graphics, images and colour as appropriate. Include statistics and other data for the more analytical thinkers among your decision makers. And finally use a variety of language that will appear to auditory (harmonise, resonate, clearly express) and kinaesthetic (energise, solid foundations, concrete examples) styles as well as more logical approaches.

Effective Proposal Writing can be challenging but combine these steps with the core principles of good business writing such concise style or thorough proof-reading and you should see an improvement your win rate.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2013

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Dec 09

Plain English or Gobbledegook?

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills No Comments »

You may not be aware that today is National Plain English day. The BBC is reporting that The Plain English Campaign has announced this year’s booby prize for gobbledegook has been awarded to the Meteorological Office. The Plain English Campaign encourages organisations to communicate clearly and simply with the public and fights against the use of gobbledegook and jargon. Local councils, government departments, police forces, law firms, insurance companies and banks have all been taken to task in the past for baffling the public by communicating with meaningless and confusing language.

Dictionary English Christopher Ewing i Plain English or Gobbledegook?

© istockphoto.com/Christopher Ewing

This year the Met Office’s use of expressions such as ‘probabilities of precipitation’ in its new weather forecast has been voted the worst offender. Would it not be simpler to tell the public that it is likely to rain or it might rain rather than that there are ‘probabilities of precipitation’? Communicating in plain English means using an everyday word rather than a less commonly used (often Latinate) equivalent. Of course, the Met Office has argued that precipitation is not just rain but encompasses all sorts of ‘stuff that falls from the sky’ including hail, drizzle, snow, sleet and so on. But for most of us, it means it’s going to rain! The other plain English rule broken by the Met Office here is to ‘avoid nomilizations’ or in other words use verbs instead of nouns. Using two nouns, saying that there are ‘probabilities of precipitation’ sounds quite abstract and is more verbose than ‘it might rain’ which has no nouns and makes us understand that this really is likely to happen. We particularly need to avoid abstract nouns if we want to achieve a more intelligible communication style. This often means nouns ending in –ment such as arrangement or improvement or –tion such as modification, elaboration, precipitation, implementation and so on.

In a nutshell, communicating in plain English means using:

  • Shorter sentences
  • Words the public will understand
  • Personal pronouns
  • The active rather than the passive voice
  • More verbs than nouns
  • Instructions where appropriate
  • Lists

Plain English does not mean overly simplistic or childish communication but instead it means communicating in a way that will allow the audience to understand the message immediately. It can be difficult to train ourselves to break old habits and communicate in a style that helps our audience to understand our message rather than to understand how clever we are. This is why many individuals and organisations undertake communication skills or writing training programmes. These courses can raise awareness of what the audience needs to understand the message and introduce practical techniques to reduce the gobbledegook and ensure we are understood.

© Communicaid Group Ltd. 2011

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Jul 11

Why Organisations need a Corporate Style Guide

Business Writing Skills, Communication Skills 1 Comment »

Among employees of many organisations there is often a perceived tension between the need for business writing to be personalised to the writer and reader and the need for a consistent professional style.

Many professionals are understandably cautious about producing bland, ‘vanilla’ documents full of corporate speak and meaningless buzzwords. However, maintaining a personal style adapted for your reader is not incompatible with following corporate guidelines that ensure written communication reflects the professionalism and values of the organisation.

Typing Dmitriy Shironosov i Why Organisations need a Corporate Style Guide

© istockphoto.com/ Dmitriy-Shironosov

Objectors may say that they do not need to be shown how to write as they are well educated and have been writing for business for many years. However, trends in business writing change. An obvious example is the more minimalist ‘open’ approach to punctuation used in business writing today. This would have looked sloppy and unprofessional 20 years ago but today is part of the cleaner, fresher ‘plain English’ approach to business writing. In addition, there are sometimes several ‘right’ ways of writing such as whether or not we hyphenate certain words. Co-operation or cooperation are both technically correct but it looks more professional if the same form is used consistently – not only within a specific document but in all written communication produced by the same organisation. A style guide includes useful lists of these technical nuances which can be time consuming for each individual to check.

Other detractors may claim that if they adopt a slightly different writing style their clients and/or superiors may not like it. Of course, any new communications initiative such as a corporate style guide needs to be embraced from the top down. As for clients, it is not uncommon for lawyers, as an example, to suggest that they will lose credibility if they take a more modern plain English approach and use simple language in shorter sentences. These very clients may actually prefer documents that are fresh and easy to read and that reflect the modern, forward thinking ethos of the company they have engaged.

There are many reasons why a style guide adds value to an organisation’s internal and external communication but here are a few.

Saves Time – A style guide saves time by providing quick answers to format, style and accuracy questions that occur when writing.
Saves Money – A style guide enables employees to spend fewer hours writing, reviewing, and correcting documents. It also reduces the expense of training and avoids potentially costly mistakes.
Ensures Consistency – A style guide promotes consistency throughout the company
Guarantees Professionalism – A style guide ensures that the company enhances its external image by developing and an appropriate style that consistently delivers quality documents and reflects the brand values of the organisation.

Writing a corporate style guide from scratch can be a daunting task and so many organisations work closely with expert consultants or follow business writing training programmes that highlight the key elements of a style guide.

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