Businessese is not my first language.

April 24, 2011 1:45 PM

How do I go about learning to speak better businessese?

I've recently missed out on a couple of great job opportunities, and suspect that the reason may be that I have trouble talking about what I do (user experience) in a way that makes me sound as intelligent and experienced in the field as I really am.

This issue also comes up when I'm speaking with clients, colleagues and supervisors in my current job.

What usually happens is that I get into delivering an answer or describing a concept and things get tangled up. I grope for words and terminology, occasionally miss the mark, even ramble a bit, and end up with some polite but slightly confused faces looking back at me. Compounding the issue is that aspects of my work can often be abstract and involve multiple steps.

The irony is, I'm pretty good at what I do, just not talking about it apparently. Any thoughts or resources -- they don't have to be UX-specific at all -- are welcome.

posted by Work to Live to Work & Money (4 answers total)

One of the things that's made a difference for me is blogging about my work (in general terms) or discussing it with colleagues in written form to sort of make sure all of my thoughts are in coherent order. I've found once I've worked through a subject in text, it's much easier for me to speak in whole sentences about it.

(Note: the public nature of the writing isn't what's important, and it can be problematic depending on exactly what you do/the nature of your NDA. But the writing itself is definitely worth something.)
posted by restless_nomad at 1:56 PM on April 24, 2011

The trick is to avoid meaningless "businessese" jargon not embrace it. Use simple ordinary words and explain things as clearly as you can. You can also practice answering these types of questions in your head as you drive or something, so you've got it down pat next time you're asked. You should be able to explain what you do, it should be clear in your head, if you can't teach what you do, you don't really know how to do it.
posted by joannemullen at 1:59 PM on April 24, 2011

Can you join a local UX Book Club? (google this - sorry, typing on phone.) listening to to other people talk about work can be really helpful in developing a...pattern library for discussing your own.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:00 PM on April 24, 2011

Yeah - I was going to suggest blogging about it as well. A couple of years ago, I was feeling really stagnant in my career (network engineering), having spent years solving the same problems with - pretty much - the same equipment, nothing really new happening. So I started a blog and made a point of posting something about network wrangling twice a week. It forced me to go read up on new and cool things.

Pushing yourself to be able to explain things and discuss them in a coherent fashion. It doesn't have to be in business-ese. I just has to be clearly understandable. Talk about problems you are solving or have solved, or just things you do. Make sure to sufficiently anonymize things as appropriate so you don't look like you're talking trash about any people or companies you deal with.

I suppose in a SEO kind of way it may also help with the job hunting -- if you blog under your real name in a way that's google-able, then if someone who has your resume searches for you, they can find your informative coherent writings. :)
posted by rmd1023 at 2:03 PM on April 24, 2011 [1 favorite]