It’s World Emoji Day! Did you know emojis originate from Japan? Emoji means E-picture and moji – letter or character. We love using emojis in our texts to family and friends, but amazed that people sometimes add a smiley face (😃) emoji to their CV or covering letters. It’s such a shame, it makes their application look very unprofessional and will often mean the jobseeker does not get through to interview.
Emojis have become so widespread, in fact 92% of the online community use emojis everyday and over 10 billion emojis are sent each day¹. Their use has become very popular with Millennials and Gen Zs, but we’d always advise jobseekers to avoid emojis, even when seeking employment in social media.
Our MD, Lorraine Phair explains: “We recruit many executives within the marketing and creative sector. Opportunities in digital marketing are growing apace, but adding smiley faces or hand claps are not necessary, they just look out of place on a CV, and we don’t take these applications seriously.”
We’re not alone in our thought process. Recent research shows that 39% of senior managers¹ think it is unprofessional to use emojis in the workplace, let alone on a CV. However, 70% of employees¹ are using emojis in the workplace, although their use is sometimes met with unexpected results. Studies have revealed there can be generational misunderstanding with the use of an emoji. Some workers have expressed their love for a new idea with the use of a love heart (❤️), but this has landed them in trouble with their employers as the receiver has been in confusion to their actual meaning.
Some groups have also found a smiley face emoji (😃) to be passive aggressive² and a thumbs up (👍) sign to be very ‘uncool’. Body language can really help people communicate, but emojis just aren’t the same. So, we need to be careful how we express ourselves in the business world. Like with all communication, the nuance can be taken very differently depending on who you are sending your message to. Our advice is to keep it simple and be professional when searching for your next career move.
Discover more about our recruitment services, or find out more about our latest vacancies.
Source
¹ 30 Statistics About Using Emojis for Businesses | ZoomInfo