8 Phrases That HR People Say But Don’t Mean, As Exposed By This Interview And Career Coach

Human resources specialists are there to handle personnel issues, they are in charge of recruiting and hiring new talent and they are in charge of the bureaucracy in the company. Often we imagine them as very communicative and bubbly personalities who really seem to want to help everyone with their issues relating to work.

This impression mostly comes from the way they talk. But TikToker Boris Kiselev wants you to know that what HR says is not always what they mean. In a viral series on his page, he ‘translates’ typical HR phrases to English to reveal their hidden meanings. 

More info: TikTok

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Boris Kiselev is a career and interview coach from Australia. He helps people transform themselves so that they can “earn more, have the relationships they want and sleep better at night,” as he puts it on his website.

His vision is to “Build a better world by aspiring for the extraordinary in your own life.” This is evident on his TikTok account where he shares various tips about job interviews, how to write a good resume, how to get a promotion and just become more confident professionals.

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On TikTok, Boris has almost 678k followers and several of his videos have gone viral. He has a video with over 5 million views in which he summarizes a situation that often happens in companies when a person leaves an important position in a company and nobody new is hired so others also leave because of the increased workload. 

One of his series is called “Translating HR speak into English” and it is exactly what it sounds like. HR specialists have their own phrases that they quite often use, wanting to present a position in the best way possible during interviews, or not wanting to make everyone who already works at a place panic.

But in the series, Boris exposes that those phrases actually can mean different things and that may help you to understand whether you would like to accept the position and what to expect if you do. The series was quite successful with the first video getting almost 244k views.

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Bored Panda contacted Boris and we asked how he found out what those phrases really meant. And it turns out that it all comes from various people’s experiences. He works with clients who need help with job-related problems, so they gave him some insight as well as his social media followers who “were told one thing, but then ended up getting the opposite.”

There is a possibility that HR people really believe in what they’re saying, but Boris says that most likely they know what they’re actually doing. “It's definitely on purpose. HR is there to protect the company's image and they do their best to keep the relationship as friendly as possible.”

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With these videos, Boris wanted to help people feel better about not anticipating some of the issues they might be faced with and that it wasn’t their fault as HR has their own way of presenting things. He says, “A lot of people end up really disappointed and jaded when they encounter these sorts of phrases—offers don't come, working conditions aren't as good as they sounded, the work 'family' turns out to be abusive, etc. This small series is my attempt to say 'Hey, no wonder you didn't understand it. It's a whole different language! Let me translate it for you' with a bit of humour.”

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What do you think of Boris’ observations? Do you think they’re accurate? Or do you feel that HR specialists mean what they say? Let us know in the comments!

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