Chris Earle, Operations Director at national business telecoms firm Unicom, says more and more young people are including the shortened “textese” in both their CVs and covering letters.
Textese is the use of slang or abbreviations commonly used when sending SMS messages, with pictures, single letters and numbers representing whole words.
“Following the launch of our recent nationwide recruitment drive, I’ve received feedback from our recruitment team that approximately one in ten job applications contains some form of ‘textese’. I warn against using this slang in job applications as even with the popularity of text messaging companies still want to see examples of good grammar and punctuation, the use of such terms risks losing out on already hard to find jobs.” explains Chris.
“Replacing correct spelling with abbreviations will not only reduce the character count on a text message, it will also reduce your chances of landing a job.”
Some of the most common “txt spk” abbreviations Unicom receives in job applications include:
gr8 (great), tnx (thanks) cuz (because), xlnt (excellent), w/r/t (with regard to) and bw (best wishes)