In my business, and particularly in advertising it, I use the word ‘authentic’ a lot. I want people to have written career documents – CV, LinkedIn profile, online bios etc – that really do represent them, and all of their own unique strengths and values.
At the same time, another part of my work is trying to get underneath buzzwords. Whenever someone tells me they are “strategic”, for example, it’s my job to ask “what exactly do you mean by that?”. This is because if I just write “strategic” in a CV, then you, me and everyone else sees it as a bland bit of corporate jargon. But if I write about exactly how and why and where you are strategic, then we have something interesting.
Naturally, I got to wondering, am I falling foul of my own advice and misusing the concept of authenticity? Am I using it to create a ring of substance while sneakily saying nothing at all? Fortunately, I just stumbled across a book to help me figure it out: Authenticity is a Con by Peter York.
The Case Against Authenticity
York starts by making the argument I feared most:
When I hear the word ‘authentic’ […] I have a major scam alert […] ‘Authentic’ is a word that grates, reminding me of a fast one to be pulled, the value about to be added, the tosh about to be talked, the snobbery in waiting and the insecure micro-connoisseur at your elbow. For New Age, motivational, change-your-life speakers, marketeers, music entrepreneurs, foodies and design bugs – and, yes, politicians too – the idea of authenticity is nicely elusive, and very now.
Troublingly, I entirely agree. It’s difficult not to. We’ve all seen the word abused, and it is the very breadth and versatility of it that allows this to happen. From ‘authentic’ restaurants whose food tastes like nothing any country has ever produced, to ‘authentic’ politicians attempting cultural references that they’ve clearly learnt in a classroom, we’re awash with examples of the label being slapped on things that are almost its opposite, or at least skirt the edges of it.
Furthermore, there’s a trend in marketing that brings out the very worst of this:
What all the therapists – the change-your-life merchants and the motivators – say is that you need to get in touch with your true self; when you do, absolutely everything will click into place, but if you don’t, all your relationships and initiatives will founder and you’ll hate yourself on a daily basis.
York perfectly surmises where I have to be careful in my own advertising. Because he’s right – being ‘authentic’ is not, and cannot be, a cure-all. It won’t fix everything. Being yourself is not a quick fix for an unerringly happy life. In my work, I encourage people to be more authentically themselves at work, and to present that more assertively in their career documents, but there is a vital note of caution here – authenticity depends on context.
Context and Nuance
Dependency on context and nuance is a part of York’s argument, but it takes some reading between the lines.
In a brilliantly funny example, he imagines ‘authentic’ product packaging that states, “We don’t want you to believe that this is any better than the main competition, because it’s basically the same stuff”. This conflates authenticity with pathological honesty for comedic effect, but nobody is really suggesting that being authentic means trapping yourself in a bizarre “Liar, Liar” type existence where you have to speak total, unprompted and objective truth all the time and to your own detriment.
Maybe the makers of the product really do believe the quality is superior, or that they appeal particularly to one type of consumer, or that their brand is with worth something regardless of the ingredients. All of these could yield more authentic marketing approaches without resorting to comical self-deprecation.
York also confesses, “I find personal inauthenticity gives you more room to move in the real world. I don’t always say what I mean. I’m not exactly transparent.” Later, he explains that:
My own musical tastes […] were always ineffably inauthentic. It came naturally to me. I liked the things my bourgeois friends condemned as ‘plastic’
I think the contradiction here is obvious – by demonstrating the self-awareness that he does present different selves in different situations, that he’s not always unerringly honest, that his musical tastes are more commercial than his friends’ – York is in fact explaining exactly how authentic he is. He’s doing precisely what he says is impossible and being true to himself despite societal expectations.
Initially, I read this as an error. I thought it showed a blind spot in the argument. But on consideration, I consider it an important nuance. When he rails against authenticity, he’s targeting the commodified version – authenticity as a marketing tool or life philosophy. But when he describes his own behaviour, he’s demonstrating what authentic self-knowledge actually looks like. The real issue isn’t with authenticity itself, but with authenticity as a performance, promise or product.
The CV Connection
Happily, this is affirmed for me later in the book, as “boosterish CVs” come in for special criticism:
’Passionate’ sank into uttermost bathos from its over-use by people gushing about their unlikely passions for everything from fish farming to hotel management. Other CV words ‘passionate’ links to include ‘dynamic’, ‘creative’ and ‘motivated’.
This is especially interesting to me, because the author is highlighting that most CVs are full of empty words. I can heartily endorse this – buzzword-heavy blandness pervades the world of personal branding, from CVs to LinkedIn profiles, it seems weirdly natural for us all to lapse into a kind of corporate “CV speak” as soon as we start trying to write about ourselves.
York diagnoses the disease correctly, but the cure he can’t see is that the only way to overcome all this corporate nonsense and empty cliché is to make CVs more authentic, not less. As in, make our professional documents a truer representation of each individual person, not just a list of things they think they should say.
Additionally, there’s a grammatical point here, because the words he mentions are all clichés, but they do all have real meanings, too. Some people really are passionate about their work, or an aspect of it. So the real work isn’t just to eradicate these words, it’s to find out what each individual actually means by them.
In the case of ‘passionate’, that probably means finding the words to convey what truly excites you about the job or industry (just like asking what exactly someone means by ‘strategic’, as I mentioned at the beginning of this article). When it comes to ‘authentic’, I suppose that means accepting that one can be true to oneself without being inherently deceitful or pathologically truthful, as this book suggests.
Precision and Accuracy
York concludes with a call to action:
Never use ‘authentic’ or any of its little friends conveniently listed here, when a simpler, less inflated, more precise word would do better. Use ‘real’ or ‘fake’; ‘true’ or ‘false’; ‘believable’ or ‘unconvincing’. Unless, that is, you’re absolutely sure authentic describes exactly what you mean to say.
Here, we have a point of agreement. Authentic is often too big of a word, and more precise language would almost always provide more clarity. I’ll be mindful of this in future when I write about my business and the work I do.
That said, there’s a paradox here. While York calls for precision over inflated language, the dictionary definition of authentic is: “Being actually and exactly what is claimed; being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character”. That’s precisely what I’m aiming for when I write someone’s career documents – that the person on the page is the same person the reader ends up working with. In this case, precision means choosing the word that most accurately captures the correct meaning, even if it is the broader option.
So after a lot of soul searching, I think I’ve reached my conclusion. I don’t dispute that others use ‘authenticity’ as an empty or disingenuous concept to market their services and sound impressive. But when it comes to the work I’m doing and the impact I’m trying to make, I think I’m on the right side of York’s plea: authentic simply is exactly what I mean to say.
CV writing is classically an effort to be the best of a boring bunch – we try to write documents that are uncontroversially competent and match all of the standardised criteria for whichever job we’re applying to, whilst adding just enough information (a £ here, a % there) to make us appear marginally more competent than the competition. A bit of authenticity here is a powerful thing, and by taking a little risk on being yourself, you can reap enormous rewards with better, more values-aligned work and employer expectations that are better attuned to the person you really are, rather than the person you pretended to be to get through the interview.
This requires nuance and care in the storytelling, as the key is to portray your authentic work self in a way that compels and appeals. Between the extremes of pure personality and bland corporate drone lies your fully formed, value adding self. The one that actually turns up to work every day. The one your colleagues and manager see. Capturing that person is how we make your career documents truly authentic.
