(❓) Breaking the jargon barrier
There’s a pervasive barrier that prevents many of us from feeling confident in making a career change: the language used by specific professions.
Work-specific jargon can inform, but it can just as easily exclude.
When I asked people to share the most jargon-packed sentence they could create on LinkedIn, this one really took the cake:
I own B2B GTM/BD, driving ARR, NRR, ACV, and LTV via ABM, PLG, partner-sourced MQL→SQL→SAL motions, QBRs, and cross-functional CS/RevOps/PMM alignment against OKRs and KPIs.
Is your head spinning yet? Turns out all that adds up to: “I find people we should do business with, get them interested, make the deal happen, and keep growing the partnership.”
Put in plain language, it’s much easier to see how skills in other fields could translate to this type of work. The trick is, it’s up to you to make the translation.
Faced with dense, difficult work jargon, you’ve got a few options:
- Just ask the jargon-spouter what it means. The risk here, of course, is that you’ll reveal yourself to be less experienced in the ins and outs of this particular field. I would suggest that if someone’s not willing to give you even a small hint about what they’re talking about, they may not be worth your time and talent. But that may always be the best move, so…
- Find another source. You could find other people in the field or simply ask a search engine or AI to try translating. Find some webinars or online resources and note the lingo.
When Laura Krantz McNeill moved from editorial to product work, for instance, she learned what words to use so she could successfully translate her expertise:
“People will love to talk about their work and you can listen to the words that they use — the phrasing, the jargon, the positioning — and use them. Figure out how to frame your past experiences in the language of where you want to go, and make it easy for the hiring manager to see how you could fit in.”
If you don’t understand the language, don’t count yourself out. Somewhere along the way, you learned everything you know now, after all. Instead, put in that same curiosity to count yourself in. Just as technical language can obscure meaning, spending too much time having the same conversations with the same people can blind anyone to other approaches and expertise. You may be just what someone is missing to put all the pieces together.
Happy navigating,
Bridget
What is the Job Hunt Pathfinder? It’s a toolkit with four exercises designed to give you clarity and control over your next career move, paired with a live strategy group session where we refine your positioning and co-develop your action plan.
Every Pathfinder alum reported increased positioning clarity (scoring their career clarity 4.4 out of 5 after using the toolkit compared to before) and said they’d recommend the session to a job-hunting friend.
The whole toolkit + live session is just $25 (that’s $5 for each resource!), and remember, if you’re not currently getting paid for your work, you don’t have to pay for Career River. Just contact me for a sponsored seat. Doors close tonight at 11:59 p.m. ET!
Author
