介绍:
Xiaohua: Hello and welcome to Roundtable’s Word of the Week. This week we are giving you some job-hunting tips. We’re going to talk about things you can say in your resume to praise yourself.
Mark: Yes. It’s always difficult with resumes, or CVs. Curriculum vitae, to use the actual Latin, this means “story of your life”. Curriculum vitae. Or resume, which is French, with an acute E accent on the end. Sometimes people leave it off.
Xiaohua: I see. That’s an interesting point to make, and so let’s take a look at some of these words and phrases you can use.
Mark: So when you’re talking about yourself in your resume, you might want to talk about your personality. Some good things to put would be, for example, that you have “a stable personality and a high sense of responsibility”.
Xiaohua: 如果想要形容一下你的为人如何的时候呢，可以说“性格稳重、非常有责任感”。
Mark: The other thing you should do is to try to use lots of positive words, and avoid words with negative connotations. For example, you use words like “bright”, “ambitious”, “self-motivated”, and the word “positive” itself is always good on the resume.
Xiaohua: 在简历上肯定都要多用积极的词汇，所以说像“聪明”、“有进取心”，还有“积极”这个词本身都可以用上。
Mark: Now when it comes to working in a team, which is again, something that employers like to read, that you’re “a team player”. That’s become a bit of a cliché actually, in the western resumes and CVs in recent years. But it is very important. In an increasingly diverse and multicultural work force in some countries too, that’s very important to say that you can work with just anybody.
Xiaohua: 强调自己有团队合作精神是很重要的。另外如果在跨国公司工作就会有跟国际团队合作的机会，所以说自己是一个可以适应不同文化的人， “work well with multicultural work force”, 也是很重要的。
Mark: But it’s not all about teamwork. You should also emphasize the fact that you can work well independently unsupervised. Put in words like “resourceful”, “self-motivated”, you “use your initiative”, and so forth. Again, these are words with very positive connotations.
Xiaohua: 除了夸自己善于团队合作之外， 也要强调自己是可以胜任独立工作的。
Mark: There are some other characteristics which go down well on a resume. The fact that you’re “highly organized” and “efficient”, that you have “good presentation skills” because remember, your employer might be thinking that they want someone that would stay with a company for quite a long time, and therefore progress up what they often call “the greasy pole” of management, for example. They call it that because it’s very hard to get up there, and very fast to slide down “a greasy pole” if you do the wrong thing, so you need to be very careful. But make it clear that you do have potential to be more than the requirements of the job you’re applying for, so you could say you have “good presentation skills”, you have “good managerial skills”, and “organizational capabilities”, and also crucially, say that you are “willing to learn and progress”. Nobody likes a know-all who comes into a job saying they know everything and they’ve got nothing to learn. It’s important to be just a little bit humble and say that you are willing to learn and progress in your career.
Xiaohua: That’s right. 说自己有“良好的组织能力”、“可以高效率的工作”也是很重要的, “highly organized and efficient”。 另外很重要的一点就是不要把话说的太满啦， 因为没有人愿意雇佣一个自以为什么都知道的人来工作。所以说 “willing to learn more”, “willing to progress” 也是非常好的。
Mark: That’s right. Now, as well as the key words that you should use on the resume, there is something to avoid. For example, don’t say something like “I think I can do this job.” It shows a huge lack of confidence. Say something like “I am confident in my ability to excel in this job.” “Excel” is a really positive word to use in a resume.
Xiaohua: 有一些词呢， 是最好不要说的，譬如说 “I think I can do the job”，“我觉得我可以胜任”。与其这样写稍微的没有信心，不如说 “I know”, “I believe”, 或者是 “I am confident I can excel”。
Mark: That’s right. Another phrase to avoid is “I will try”. Now even if you don’t know that you’re going to succeed in the job, you don’t want to tell your future employer that. So don’t say “I will try”, say, “I am confident that I will succeed in any role assigned to me”, for example.
Xiaohua: 还有一句要避免说的话就是 “I will try”, “我会试试的”。因为 “try” 这个词也给人一种没有信心的感觉。
Mark:And there’s one more phrase that I think you should really avoid. “To be honest, I’ll tell you what it is you’re like”.
Xiaohua: Okay.
Mark: It’s that phrase itself, “to be honest”. I mean this is a common phrase in English, but I must say that whenever anyone says that to me in a normal conversation, alarm bells do start ringing, because it does suggest that they haven’t been honest with you up until that point. So I would avoid saying that one, to be honest.
Xiaohua: “To be honest with you”, “说实话” 也是一个要在面试里面避免的词汇。因为人家会觉得原来你到现在才开始说实话。 And to be honest with you Mark, I’ve been enjoying this edition of Word of the Week.
Mark: I’ve enjoyed it too.
