Whether you’re graduating this spring or you’re hunting for a summer internship, you’re probably stressed about acing your interviews. To help alleviate some of that stress, we reached out to the experts from Excelle and asked them for their tips on making a great first impression. Check back every Thursday for more helpful career tips and articles!

BEWARE: Job seekers aren’t the only ones who sometimes get creative when it comes to selling themselves (i.e. resumes and cover letters that have been, shall we say, “tweaked” to make a person look like the ideal candidate). Some employers have a tendency to use verbiage that makes their open positions sound better than they really are.

Over the years, I’ve noticed some popular job descriptors that should be viewed as warning flags a potential employer might be trying to put an overly optimistic spin on a less-than-stellar work situation. Thus, when reading the want-ads, consider the following translations:

Motivated team-player – looking for someone who needs a job badly enough that they’ll put up with lots of unmotivated, annoying people from whom you’ll have to get buy-in on almost everything you do.

High achiever, driven to succeed – must be a complete brown-nose whose sole mission in life is to please and impress management.

Customer-focused – can take a lot of abuse from clients AND management and still act pleasant.

Resourceful, independent self-starter – since we have absolutely no time or resources to train you, we expect you to figure everything out for yourself…quickly.

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I decided to get out of town for the weekend. You know, head to the country where my cell phone doesn’t get service, my computer doesn’t get internet and my hair doesn’t get…clean.

And, obviously, on this particular weekend huge things happened in the world of pop culture and entertainment, which leave me with hundreds of emails and tons of voicemails upon my return. Note: hair extremely greasy.

Um. Dumbledore is gay!?

What? How on earth did I miss that? I mean, really; how the hell did I miss that?

I have read every single Harry Potter book…3 times.

I majored in English in college, meaning I learned the art of reading between the lines in all sorts of texts.

I am a total fag-hag and love (absolutely adore) gay men.

If anyone should have seen that one coming it would have been me.

I am not saying that I am some genius (though, if you would like to think of me as one I am more than happy to agree), but I am saying that I am always on the lookout for interesting sub-plots and the meaning behind everything an author writes. Especially when it involves fabulous and powerful gay men.

So, if JK had indeed intended Dumbledore to be gay from the beginning, I would have seen it. And I did not. There was no pink décor in Dumbledore’s office. There were no saucy memories of late nights in Hogsmeade’s most hoppin’ gay bars floating around the Penseive. There wasn’t even an inkling of interest between Dumbles (as I like to call him) and Cedric Diggory, and how could any gay man not fall for that boy’s eyes, not to mention his skills on the Quiddich pitch? Read More »