In addition to other answers, there's a linguistic element as well. Generalist language is generic, overused, hence relatively meaningless and uninteresting, and won't get you very far. Concrete, specific, original, and niche terms are much better at catching attention, sticking in people's minds, piquing interest.
Aside from knowing this intuitively, witnessing it in everyday life (and on HN), I've seen internal adsense A/B testing demonstrating it.
Another tip I've recently learned from watching a friend make this mistake is, if you have the opportunity to see a writing sample of the people you're applying to, even just email - mirror their writing style. Among the SV crowd that tends to be:
1. Short paragraphs, no walls of text.
2. Direct, Concise. Every sentence should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
3. Your best skills only. Ref #2.
4. Your best work examples only. Don't elaborate, just a sentence.
Aside from knowing this intuitively, witnessing it in everyday life (and on HN), I've seen internal adsense A/B testing demonstrating it.
Another tip I've recently learned from watching a friend make this mistake is, if you have the opportunity to see a writing sample of the people you're applying to, even just email - mirror their writing style. Among the SV crowd that tends to be:
1. Short paragraphs, no walls of text.
2. Direct, Concise. Every sentence should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
3. Your best skills only. Ref #2.
4. Your best work examples only. Don't elaborate, just a sentence.
5. What the article says.
6. What Swizec says above (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3907717)