Looking for a competent sales director? Wouldn’t you rather have an experienced one? Or successful? Or even well-qualified? Or is just about good enough good enough for you?

Looking for a competent page turner

Danish companies love the word competent. Problem is, it isn’t quite the heavy-weight champion of job ads that it might appear to be – and though it can mean ‘qualified for the job’ in certain contexts, it certainly doesn’t carry the weight of Danish ‘kompetent’.

Look up ‘competent’ in an English dictionary. The issues jump out at you straight away. It has two related, but conflicting, meanings. Dictionary.com shows:

1. Having suitable or sufficient skill, knowledge or experience for some purpose
2. 2. Adequate, but not exceptional.

So, competent means ‘suitable’ – a skills-set that’s a good fit. Nice. That sounds like just what I’m looking for in my sales director. But ‘sufficient’? Just about good enough to get by? Mmm, not so good…

The second definition, though, really starts to get to the heart of the problem. Adequate. Not very inspiring, is it? I wouldn’t recommend anyone build their job interview strategy on how adequate they are. Kicking off with, “I can guarantee adequate results” in a job interview for any managerial position would be as effective as breaking wind.

Saying “I’m competent,” isn’t quite as bad as saying “I’m adequate”, but it’s not much better. It sounds like you haven’t finished your sentence. And the interviewer would finish it for you: “…but nothing special/not very good/a bit slow on the uptake”. There’s no escaping it, to most people on the street, competent means ‘just about good enough’.

But there’s more.

The negative form of competent – incompetent – is used much more often than ‘competent’ in everyday speech. It’s commonly used to make complaints, especially about people’s work. Calling someone ‘competent’ conjures the shadow of its more popular, darker sibling. And never quite shakes it off.

How do you use ‘competent’? Do you think it’s appealing enough to use in a job ad, or a job interview? Let us know what you think: write a comment.

There’s nothing like a heatwave to draw people outside - and head en masse to the beach. Or, if you’re in Copenhagen, cruise Strandvejen.

So after a none-too-cool day in the office on Monday, I decided to bike home via the scenic route, up Strandvejen. As I crossed over onto Strandvejen I thought I’d hit the Friday rush hour, but as I got further north the traffic got heavier and heavier instead of thinning out. It was all black and metallic silver, bumper to bumper on both sides of the road.

An ideal opportunity for all those stuck to their hot seats to do a bit of windowshopping of course, and for those lacking a shopping gene, some serious people-watching. Once the shop fronts disappear, then what else is there to do?

That’s the only way I could reason the three-car smash further up the road. When you’re only going 5 km/h, what other reason is there? A sweaty footsole slipped off the pedal?

There’s nothing like car queues, in-car heat, and ever-so-cool-looking pedestrians eating gigantic waffle icecreams to cause a bit of distraction. And its a sure sign that summer has finally arrived on Strandvejen.

For more Strandvejen-like driving distractions and some retro summer music, put your earphones on a take a look at this:

“Do you want your caffe latte with taste?”
“Can I get it without taste?”
“Of course, but for only five kroner extra, you have it with taste.”

That was a snippet of a rather bizarre conversation I had recently in an Oslo cafe. I was rather puzzled by what a tasteless cafe latte may be: with a swirly straw perhaps. Maybe with a colourful umbrella. But after some further interrogation, I realised that the word the waitress was looking for was flavour. A small difference in word, but a huge difference in meaning. She was referring too flavoured sirups, but even with the correct word, the question still needs a little polishing to get the actual meaning right.

This wasn’t some out of the way cafe in the suburbs that wasn’t used to foreigners. It was on the main drag, two minutes walk from where the tourist boats dock - and with a clear view of the royal castle. Which made me think - perhaps special English courses designed just for waiting staff would be a good idea. If you know of any, let me know and I’ll pass the details onto the cafe in question.

In Denmark, “You are welcome to send an unsolicited application” is used quite a bit – but few feel comfortable with it. Quite often, our clients ask us: Is unsolicited application the right term to use? Will people understand it? What can we say instead?

So we decided to write a WordSpin article on this topic, suggesting possible - and friendlier? - alternatives. Check out This month’s questionable phrase: unsolicited applications.

What does your company use? Do you have a great alternative to unsolicited applications that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear your thoughts!