A lot of my blogs are inspired/generated by reading other people's. In fact, sometimes they are fashioned out of comments I've made on other people's offerings. This is one such blog. Fellow copywriters Andy Maslen and his Seven reasons why copywriters shouldn’t blog and Tom Albrighton's 7 reasons copywriters should blog were my inspiration on this occasion. Two conflicting views, but is there one right answer? Probably not. See what you think.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to blog mainly on things I feel passionately about, or where I feel I have a valid opinion that will stimulate debate and constructive criticism. I don't do it to win customers, but rather to show that I have a brain that goes beyond thinking just about my stock-in-trade all the time. I do it also hopefully to garner respect in the business world I operate in as someone who has an informed view about the space in which they move.

Interestingly (perhaps), I seldom write about copywriting. Of course, I've done a few 'tips' pieces aimed at trying to put a stop to the plethora of abysmal online job ads that clog up the online airwaves. I’m often found to be banging on about the lack of quality in online job ads too. But, by and large, I'm not here to teach someone else to do my job, otherwise I'd have less of a job to do. I prefer instead to choose a topic that’s close to my heart, I’ve had experience of, or that I feel strongly about, and go on about that.

Is it a waste of my time? I don’t think so. I only do it when I HAVE the time i.e. in between jobs, maybe when there's a lull. Or, if it's something that particularly peeves me, I might do it of an evening or at the weekend. If a paying job comes in while I'm writing it though, the blog will get put on hold. Admittedly, there’s an awful lot of crap out there. For instance, some people have it carved in stone as part of their business plan that they must write, two, three, maybe even four blogs a week so that they can 'engage' via social media. 'Pee off' would probably be a better description than 'engage'.

My rule for blogging? If it’s something I don't feel passionate about or a subject that I don't know enough about or feel is worthy of being debated or brought to light, I won't write about it. Sadly though, we live in a technological world where loads of rubbish articles sit in the background of someone's website as traffic drivers. Hey, I don't make the rules, but nor do I abide by them. I am my own man. I write as I see fit, in the hope that it makes sense and maybe stimulates someone enough to put finger to keyboard and reply. Twitter is my weapon of choice. Facebook, to me, is a hideous invention, only made bearable by being able to keep tabs on far flung family and friends. That’s all I use it for.

I'm fortunate to have enough work to go round at present, but, I'm not foolish enough to not appreciate that may not be the case in the future. Thus the thinking is that, through my blogging, through getting people reading my articles, I hope that sometimes, just sometimes, when they happen to be in the market for a copywriter, they may think "hold on, who was that guy whose blog I enjoyed reading recently?" and take the time to track me down.

In summary, I believe anyone should be allowed to blog if they have something worthwhile to say. If, however, it's a case of just going through the motions or putting another 'top tips' blog out there for the sake of the business plan and some kind of flawed strategy, then I wouldn't do that, ever. The internet’s cluttered full of lame, poorly though through and 'samey' content. The secret to me is to try not to be just the same, but instead to develop your own individual voice, whether that be talking about your business sector, the workplace, quirks in people, redundancy, the economic climate and its affect on you, or just pure life in general. I think if you can be seen to have a valid opinion, an empathy, a certain style and tone that people warm to rather than nod off to, then a blog most definitely has its place to play.

What do you reckon?

This blog was inspired by a piece on Twitter I read earlier entitled "Ignore generational trends at your peril" by @neilmorrison. So blame him if you disagree :-)

When I was growing up as something of a surly youth way back when, I had my own idea of what I wanted and what the world owed me. But, I soon found out that in order to get on in life, and in work, you need a degree of flexibility rather than a set of immovable expectations around which employers need to lightly tread. The difference is of course, back then we didn’t as a generation have a voice as such. There was no such thing as blogging or social networks. We just got on with either conforming or watching from the sidelines. Nowadays however, not a day passes by without reading about how this generation is different and how they need to be treated differently. But are they, and do they?

I’m not just saying it because I am now older and wiser, but the notion that employers need to wise up to the ideal modus operandi of Gen Y is frankly a load of arse! Why? Because every established business has its own unique environment and is made up of a mix of ages ethnicities, cultures and personalities. Getting your foot in the door and your feet under the desk demands the ability to adapt, to say the right things, act the right way and come across as someone they want to employ. Going in with a preconceived idea of what Gen Y are and a wish list in your head about the way you want to work akin to the crazy demands of a kidnapper hostage situation is madness and doomed to failure (although a company helicopter in year 2 should I hit all my targets would be nice).

Back to my surly youth again, and I recall my first experience of work in the real world to be an eye opening experience that required me to ditch my theoretical opinion very quickly and get into line with reality. And the reality is that there’s no room for anyone in a business who thinks the world owes them a living or that conditions have to be just so in order to satisfy the ideology they have read about in a thousand and one blogs on the subject of Gen Y and what they want.

Last week I made a very interesting but slightly alarming discovery. As someone who writes a lot of online copy for direct employers via their recruitment marketing agencies, I sometimes take the time to check whether a particular ad has run and, if so, whether the copy I wrote has been tweaked at all or run ‘as is’. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I discovered that an ad I wrote specifically for the Guardian’s online careers section and one niche job board was running in The Sun newspaper's online careers section!

I mentioned this in passing to the client’s ad agency contact when we next spoke and they, at first, like me, were surprised, but then, when the potential consequences dawned upon them, a little bit shocked. Here’s why. Direct employers use the services of a recruitment marketing agency for a variety of reasons. Amongst other things, they take away a lot of the hassle of advertising the employer’s vacancies. Copy, design, if for print, and media recommendations, sometimes based on extensive research if the role happens to be particularly niche or specialist - all are part of the service an advertising agency provides. The aim being the age old adage of the right ad in the right place, thus cutting down on the employer receiving irrelevant and poor quality response. On the other side of the fence though you have the media. Sometimes it’s the online version of a national or regional newspaper or trade publication, sometimes a niche or generalist job board. It all depends on what the vacancy is.

By and large, the agency/media relationship works fine. But, I can see a turning point coming where some recruitment suppliers, i.e. job boards, are going to seriously shoot themselves in the foot and alienate themselves from the advertising agencies that they, if not wholly, then certainly to a great extent, rely on to give them their business. The reason? When my agency contact got in touch with the job board in question they were essentially told rather glibly “Oh yeah, The Sun is part of our network. What’s the problem? You’re getting the extra coverage for free”.  Er, hello? That kind of skewed thinking is ridiculous. If it were the case then let’s just get rid of every recruitment advertising website out there and just have one great big job board where the world and his partner can post their jobs. Hey presto, you’ll have what, an audience of 5 or 6 million and hundreds of replies to every ad you post (not to mention lots of lovely spam to go with it). See where I’m coming from? It’s quite simple. Quantity doesn’t equate to quality, and never will.

If I was an employer who wanted to recruit a highly skilled professional I would want my ad agency to advise me where to place the job based on targeting the right audience and cutting down on poor and irrelevant response, not have my vacancy fired out to all and sundry in the knowledge that many of the applications I get will simply present me with an administrative nightmare. Think about it. The repercussions could end up not only affecting job boards bottom lines but destroying their relationship with the agencies that are advising their clients to advertise in a certain medium but can no longer rest assured that their vacancies aren’t being farmed out to other sites ‘in the network’ that neither the agency or client requested. Indeed, it’s already happening. Some job boards admit to having networks and social teams on board whose role is purely to scattergun jobs all over the place in the deluded belief that they are doing the advertiser a favour.

In the instance I mentioned about The Sun, it turned out that the client had, for their own reasons, previously requested that none of their jobs appear on a News International website. But, as well as the embarrassment of an ad agency finding out that a job they painstakingly wrote the copy and did the media research for, had in fact ended up being advertised in a totally different place, there are also other possible consequences.  Firstly, what about the candidate journey? They think they’re replying to an ad advertised in The Sun, but lo and behold then get redirected to a job board, then redirected yet again, to the employer’s website. And what about the employer’s HR or admin team that have the task of trying to keep the whole job application experience a pleasant one, but struggle, because they’re bogged down with loads of unwanted response, the majority of it awful because it came from sources where they didn’t even know they had advertised?

It seems to me that the whole online recruitment experience is becoming a mess because of this latter day notion that taking an ad targeted at one website and firing out to lots of others is actually a good thing. It’s not. Recruitment marketing agencies beware. You'll end up embarrassed and your role negated unless you do something about it.

I still remember the feeling to this day. The gut wrenching feeling that comes with redundancy is unlike anything I had ever felt before.

It was the middle of winter, just before Christmas. I was doing pretty well at my job. Or so I thought. I was an Account Manager for one of the UK’s leading recruitment marketing agencies and looked after the biggest account in the business at the time (the BBC) and was kept pretty busy, whilst many around me were already experiencing the effects of the recession that had bitten some months earlier. Their clients were quiet. The phones weren’t ringing. The money wasn’t coming in. It was a bleak scenario. And, it was about to get bleaker.

There had already been several rounds of redundancies. Each time my 'team' had missed out on taking a hit. It seemed inevitable therefore that with departments around us losing people, our turn would come sooner or later. And come it did!

One afternoon, just after I came back from lunch with a colleague, my phone rang. My boss was on the other end of the line, but he wasn’t sitting in his office some thirty feet behind me. Oh no, he was calling from a different floor. Boom! That was the only sign I needed. My career to date, was to come to a very sudden end there and then.

As I shuffled down the corridor on the floor below, I rehearsed in my mind what I might say. How I would fight to protect my position within the company. After all, I was the busiest person in the agency. To get rid of me would be madness. Wouldn’t it? Like all the best laid plans and rehearsed speeches however, everything I wanted to say went out of the window. In fact, very little was said. We both knew what this meeting was about.

As I was handed a brown envelope containing the terms of my departure, I’ll admit there were tears, there was anger, there was the intense feeling of nausea to the pit of my stomach, there was even a degree of begging (when I saw Ricky Gervais play a similar scene in The Office years later it brought a lump to my throat. I knew that feeling). All of this was made worse (although looking back I can laugh now, thankfully) by an ex of mine (tip: don't do office romances) scurrying up to me in tears as I went back to clear my desk, to apologise for breaking up with me and having flaunted her new social life in front of me for the last few months. Really you couldn't make this particular afternoon up!

A hastily arranged meet up in a bar with my shocked colleagues and a few industry friends followed, but not before I had been grabbed by security and relieved of my building pass. There was very little dignity attached to redundancy back than. No tact. No sensitivity. No kid gloves. One day you were in, the next, you were out, never to darken their door again. No support, no career counselling, just you, a brown envelope and a bleak looking future.

Indeed, over the next few months, as well as undertaking a fruitless job search (we were in the midst of a recession) I went through the whole gamut of emotions. Anger, upset, apprehension, fear – you name it. I often couldn’t sleep at night at the injustice of it all. A mattress I had propped up in the corner of our bedroom used to regularly serve as a punchbag as I knocked seven shades of the brown stuff out of it in the middle of the night, imagining it to be the person who had wielded the axe on my career. Life, it seemed, would never be the same again.

Along with the indignity of having to ‘sign on’, all for a pittance a week (I'd been paying thousands in NI contributions for years, was this my reward for all that hard work?), I was ready to fight anyone who dared to question whether I was ‘actively seeking employment’. Believe me when I say I was a very angry young man! I felt cheated, let down, put onto the scrap heap without having done anything wrong. Perhaps worst of all is the stigma of it all, imaginary or, maybe in some cases true. The notion that "he can't be very good at what he did if they got rid of him" or, now being unemploeyed that I was lazy, a scrounger, one of life's chancers. All of that sits on your shoulders 24 hours a day.

Eventually, after several months of frantic job searching, I was fortunate enough to get back into employment. It meant taking a 25% pay cut and doing something I hadn’t considered as my next career move prior to my redundancy, but needs must, beggars can’t be choosers etc. etc. I then had to endure the endless lectures from my new and unaware of the reality of it all colleagues who, whilst never having experienced redundancy, were happy to arrogantly announce how they would "take any job, even shelf stacking or working at a petrol station" rather than be out of work. Oh, if only life were that simple! Over qualified, under-qualified, only there until a job you actually want crops up - there are many reasons why you can't just walk into your local supermarket and get a job stacking shelves if you have previously been working in a completely different business and at a completely different level - but don't let the reality get in the way of the incredibly warped theory folks!

It took a while, a long while, but I was lucky. I was able to eventually bounce back and get myself to where I wanted to be. But I will never, ever forget the despair, the hopelessness, the anger, the upset and the sheer gut wrenching feeling that that that one afternoon in my career brought me. It has stayed with me ever since, and will stay with me forever. To this day, I never forget how lucky I am to even to be able to make a living. When working for other people I never bemoaned my lot or made unreasonable demands. I never considered myself to be superior or more deserving of fast tracking or preferential treatment and I never took anything for granted or got annoyed by the trivial. Now, having worked for myself for the past 11 years I still don't assume it's my God given right to be employed full-time. Things could change. They could change for you, the reader too, one day, out of the blue. Maybe they have. Perhaps that's why you're reading this.

The only upside about redundancy, although I didn't know it at the time, is that it has made me stronger, more aware, more tolerant and more appreciative of what I have, not just in the workplace, but in my life in general. Leaky washing machine? Not a problem. Missed a train? So what, there will be another one along soon enough.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend it  as a life choice, but I would say to anyone who is going through it or may have to face up to it in the future - there's every chance you will come out the other side a better, stronger, more knowledgeable, appreciative person than the one that went in to pick up that brown envelope (it's probably downloadable these days). You'll have more perspective and more empathy. Ultimately it will probably also make you happier both at work and in your personal life because suddenly the trivial, easily resolved problems of life won't matter to you quite so much.

And to those who simply assume that if you're unemployed and on benefits you're a scrounger, can't be very good at what you do or should simply go out and find another job doing anything just to fill the gap - dream on. It could happen to you one day, and when it does you'll quickly come to appreciate that this coloured view you have of people on benefits is far removed from reality. Redundancy invariably isn't a yardstick of talent or lack of it. It's purely a numbers game played at the top echelons of a company during times of corporate adversity - of which there is plenty at the moment. In every society there is a small percentage who have no intention of finding a job, but there is also a far bigger percentage who get written off unfairly.

The relentless advance of technology's great. Applicant tracking systems, more analytics than you can shake a stick at, the way we can effortlessly keep in touch with each other, and even make ‘friends’ out of strangers. The trouble is, it’s made the job posting process so simple that literally anyone can do it. Indeed, I’m sure, seeing so many awful job ads on a daily basis, that in some agencies a junior member of staff or someone working in a support role is entrusted to post the latest vacancies online.

The result? Dull and turgid job descriptions hastily cut and pasted by someone with no understanding of the client’s actual need. An advertisement that’s littered with spelling mistakes, including inexcusable errors like asking for “a good telephone manor” or stating right at the start of the ad that “our client are looking for…”. There are literally thousands of examples out there for all to see! The question is - why?

When it comes to advertising and marketing, whether it be a website, a TV or radio advertisement or the good old job post, people are driven, first and foremost, by their emotions. Just as you wouldn’t book a holiday at a hotel if the images made it look shabby and the write up was full of spelling mistakes, so good quality potential candidates won't give you more than a few seconds to grab their attention and interest them enough to read on. If all they come across is badly written or cut and pasted copy full of errors, the chances are they’ll soon move on to the next ad. Yes, you’ll still probably get inundated by irrelevant and poor applications and swear that it’s the medium you are using to advertise that’s at fault (“job boards are dying” etc.), but the reality is, if you don’t invest proper time, care and forethought in your communications, you’ll continue to get poor quality response, no matter what medium you use.

Put simply, every time you put a message out there, you're making a statement about your company. You're projecting an image. And, you're being judged - constantly.  Not just by potential candidates who are likely to think that if you can’t get the basics right, why should they trust you with their career aspirations. No, it’s far worse than that. I’m talking about potential clients too – and possibly existing ones as well, keen to find out what sort of service they are actually getting for their money.

That's why I suggest that, if you’re not doing it already, you make sure that whenever you’re thinking of advertising, updating your website or sending out an ‘e-mailer’, you take the time to get the message right. Spelling mistakes, bad grammar, typos, and the lack of a cohesive, powerful or convincing message - all of these factors can make the difference between success and failure. I appreciate that some people are just not comfortable writing a job ad. Indeed, I’ve met lots of consultants who put off writing them to the very last minute or see it as so much of a chore that they hand the task over to someone else. But, at the end of the day, good quality candidates are your lifeblood – and they won’t respond to just any old advertisement. Cutting corners will only cut your success rate.

Your recruitment consultancy may well already recognise the importance of clear, consistent and alluring communications.  Or maybe you need to take the time do a quick audit and identify the people in your office who have a flair for writing the ads and entrust them to be the champions of your advertising and marketing communications. Either way, in an ever more competitive recruitment marketplace, it pays to remember that first impressions really do count – and there’s a whole online world out there watching. Write what you yourself would want to read.

Conduct an online job search these days and you’re soon confronted with lots of ads, many suggesting, without actually saying it of course, that each day spent working with them will be just like dying and going to heaven, only better. But should they be taken at face value?  Is your workplace heaven? Or is it more like hell, despite what that ever so enticing advertisement that lured you there in the first place suggested? Here I have taken a look at what job ads say and what they actually mean and present for your entertainment, my top 40:

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 1 "It's a stressful role" – the last person that did this job now spends their days shouting "Oi oi saveloy!" and barking at cars

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 2 “we’re a close-knit team” – we have to be, there’s hardly room to swing a cat in here!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 3 “you're innovative” – you bring your own mug in to the office just in case anyone else has got ‘the lurgy’

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 4 “it’s a stimulating environment" – the drinks machine coffee is really, really strong

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 5 ”You're self-aware" – Hooray! You know who you are. That’s always a bonus!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 6 “you're a tough negotiator” – you shout, stare daggers and slam your phone down a lot until you get your own way

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 7 "it's a lively environment" – get used to having those important telephone conversations interrupted by the intermittent whooping and cheering of the sales team celebrating another success.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 8 "you're a strategist" – you spend your time chin stroking & 'thinking' whilst others do the actual work

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 9 "We're a friendly team" - until you cross us or screw up, that is

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 10 "you're fiercely competitive" – we've got 400 staff....but only 15 parking spaces!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No.11 "it's a vital role" – Let's face it, that photocopying and filing isn't going to do itself!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 12 "you manage your time well" – you surf the web all day, but minimise the browser whenever someone comes near your desk

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 13 "you're an innovative, dynamic & highly motivated team player" - you're a big fat cliché

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 14 "this is a brand new role" – (as you can probably tell from the very flaky and vague job description)

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 15 "you're sensitive to the needs of others" – bring cakes in on your birthday, or else!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 16 "We’re an innovative company" - we've been using soft toilet paper in our rest rooms since 1973!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 17 “An ideal environment in which to grow” - ….tomatoes! The air conditioning is screwed, so the office is generally hotter than the sun’s core

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 18 “you have good time management skills” - you're one of those extremely annoying people that gets up at five in the morning, even on your days off, just so you can 'make the most of the day'

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 19 “you’re highly persuasive, and a good team builder” – you frequently drag people away from their desk to give them some crap motivational talk in the boardroom. You shout things at them like ‘there’s no ‘I’ in the word ‘team’ “ whilst they cry a lot

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 20 "you're diplomatic and discreet" – you bad mouth your colleagues, but never to their faces.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 21 "you have what it takes to connect with staff right across the organisation" - you'll be working on reception a lot

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 22 "you touch lives every day" – you're a latter day Mother Teresa ( but please, no flip flops)

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 23 “you have previous experience” – what else can experience be?

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 24 “working on a rota basis” – kiss your social life goodbye  for the foreseeable future

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 25 “you have well-rounded people skills” – you get on well with the clinically obese

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 26 "ours is a target-driven environment" – we’d all sell our grandmothers for £1 if push came to shove.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 27 "You'll get regular reviews" – No salary increases, just regular reviews, biscuits and lame excuses

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 28 "You'll be a key player" – you'll unlock the office in the morning & lock it up again at night long after we’ve all gone home.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 29 "You’ll develop key strategies" - for example: how on earth do I escape this absolute hellhole for lunch?

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 30 "we're taking communications to a whole new level" - we're moving your team up to the 7th floor!

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 31 “...a great opportunity to hone your communication skills” – particularly as we’ll be popping out to the local bar for a couple of hours every lunchtime to drown our sorrows, thus leaving you on your own to answer the phones.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 32 "It’s an environment where you’ll be encouraged to make your mark" – we advise employees to put labels on the food they bring in to the office so that no one steals it.

Job ads. What they say/what they mean No. 33 ”This is an exciting opportunity” – Oh come on, admit it. When was the last time you were genuinely "excited" whilst you were in an office, eh? And I’m not talking about that time at the Christmas party when you got drunk on cheap wine and thought it would be a laugh to photocopy your genitals. Yes, you’ll be vaguely excited for the first couple of days, maybe even a week - we all were. But the novelty will soon wear off and you’ll quickly become sad, bitter and resentful like the rest of us.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 34 "you're driven" - but sadly only to the station in the morning by your downtrodden partner

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 35 “…no two days will be the same” – it really is absolute chaos here

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 36 "you're results-driven" - if your football team loses you’re almost suicidal and totally unapproachable for days

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 37 "you pick up the phone and make things happen" – mostly when we need more Tippex, staples or toilet roll in the rest rooms

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 38 "you're friendly, willing and enthusiastic" – you're a corporate lapdog

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 39 "our modern offices are situated in a prestigious location" - Yes, the offices are really lovely… if you can find them! We’re in the middle of some God forsaken, soulless industrial wilderness, just off the ninth roundabout that looks exactly like the other eight you’ll drive past on your way to the interview, as you get hopelessly lost and arrive late, totally stressed out and in a foul mood.

Job ads, what they say/what they mean No. 40 "you're robust" – You never cry. It all stems back to that childhood spent mostly in cupboards.