Career Counselling: Creativity in the recruitment phase – Is there a place for it?

A simple and resounding NO!

Now before many of you debate ones response stop for a minute or two and think about the word creativity and/or the word create.  What does this conger up for you?

From a Human Resource perspective every time one hears the word create or creative with reference to employment documentation shivers run up and down ones spine.  As from ones experience, one has learnt that creativity in this sense of the word more often than not equals untruths, lies, intentional misrepresentation and that in itself can cause a whole lot of trouble for applicants.

So when you are writing your employment documentation (or employing someone to do it on your behalf) keep the document truthful in content and expression.  That is, do not say you have a particular qualification or a certain amount of experience if you do not.  Whilst, you need to elevate your English to a professional rather than a conversational context do not use words or phrases that you do not understand or regularly use.

So rather than having the preconceived idea that you must be creative in your employment documentation perhaps a more appropriate cognition (thought) is that your employment documentation is factual, logical, sequential and most importantly presented in a highly professional manner.