Synergy: the buzzword that refuses to die

They say that all politics is local, and the same might be said of hiring. We’ve shared a number of examples this year of job posting phrases that perform differently in different cities: volunteering, super, intense, and awesome to name a few.

If you are already a Textio user, then you will know that corporate jargon is a wide category of phrases that across the board will generally hurt the performance of your job listings. But even those words can show some geographic variation.

For example, take the poster child for bad business buzzwords: synergy. This word morphed from an innocent synonym for cooperation into its current corporate jargon status in the late 1950s, and then climbed in popularity until starting to crash in 2005.

But Textio’s data shows that there are still plenty of areas where job posts that include the word synergy actually have a better chance of filling quickly compared to the average listing. Big places like Salt Lake City, and London, and Honolulu. Is synergy making a comeback? Maybe the recently-revealed theory of 14-year word cycles is true? Or maybe not. There are just as many place where synergy means it takes longer on average to fill a job. Here is the complete list:

Cities where “synergy” means roles will fill faster:

1. Salt Lake City, UT
2. London, United Kingdom
3. Honolulu, HI
4. San Francisco, CA
5. Phoenix, AZ
6. Chicago, IL
7. Denver, CO

Cities where “synergy” predicts slower time-to-fill:

1. Miami, FL
2. Sydney, Australia
3. Washington, DC
4. Philadelphia, PA
5. Dallas, TX
6. Cleveland, OH
7. New York, NY