You know what job recruiters are getting sick of hearing about? Your "creativity." LinkedIn has analyzed its 187 user profiles and mapped which buzzwords were the most overused in each country this year. The blue for "creative" shows up all around the world, in places ranging from Canada to the U.S. to the not-very-emotional Singapore. The next too-popular buzzword of 2012 has been "motivated," which appears in front of HR people everywhere from the U.K. to Middle East countries to South Africa. Meanwhile people in France and Italy want to be seen as "responsible." Michael V. Copeland at Wired finds that "puzzling:" "There are few things those two nations have in common, and an overarching ethos of responsibility isn’t one of them." Perhaps they're trying to counter stereotypical excesses. LinkedIn, after all, doesn't recommend pinning down your profile with any of these words: "Set yourself apart in the new year," reads the social networks' accompanying blog post, "by wiping your profile clean of buzzwords!

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Esther Zuckerman