Discussion on:

Inflated job titles: Employees and employers beware

"Chief Visionary Officer" and that was some 15 or more years ago.

I still don't know to this day whether the person was serious or had a very good sense of humour.

There is a serious point, though - increasingly we are in a multinational world and titles that might seem inspiring in one culture/language may not be seen in quite the same way elsewhere. We Brits are very cynical about fancy job titles (or at least if you come from outside London.

On Linkedin I see all the time people who have one or a mix of titles like:
1. Guru
2. Creative thinker
3. Visionary
4. Evangelist
5. Mentor
6. Strategist
7. Generalist

Anyone who refers to himself (primarily men) using such titles seems to be in a need of shrink's help. These titles are symptoms of narcissism and inferiority complex.

Evangelist is common in Sili Valley for high-level marketing people, who are boosters for the company's products. Mentor is a role -- coaching and guiding less experienced personnel -- that I've seen most often in academia and in places where management pyramids don't preclude cooperation with parallel lines. Strategist is just that -- someone who is charged with thinking and planning beyond the quarter, beyond the immediate project -- though obviously teetering over into vapor as this is something nearly everyone should be doing.

All true. If you are employed by a multimillion $ corporation in Silicon Valley I guess they may make you a strategist or evangelist.

However, if you start a 1-man company and then announce to the world that you are a visionary I guess something is not connecting well.

If I see pink elephants, but no one else does, am I a visionary? (That would be so frickin' cool!)

..an alcoholic.

A place I used to work at had several people with the job title "European Business Development Director". They were the Salesmen. It might have impressed clients (briefly!!) but the rest of us considered it a joke.

It is funny to note that Salesmen are not proud of being a salesmen and need to be motivated by a title that hides their true reason for visiting... Business Development is SALES!...

Business Development folks are the folks that hunt down the potential contracts and run the teams that build the proposals. I think they are the true Business Development people. They are definitely not Sales. Sounds like Sales folks who are using that title don't really know what it means.

Those folks described are selling the company's services via the written proposals. That sounds like salesmen to me. In fact, most job duties require salesmanship to some degree. Hmmm ... I guess it's time to dust off and don that plaid leisure suit.

I am proud to be a salesman. FYI, we don't choose our titles, management does. What's more rediculous is the title in lieu of compensation. At one point I had the title of "National Strategic Account Consultant." Which did provide for a few laughs, so at least it was an Ice Breaker. My card for the last 10 years had no title on it.
Also, I vividly recall a couple of our best salesmen wanted the title of salesman on their card and they weren't allowed to get them printed that way.
Finally, sales people (me included) are very proud of what they do. If it weren't for sales people, no one else would have jobs. So you might want to go thank your sales department.

These guys, http://www.sweetwater.com/, don't have salespeople. They have sales engineers. I once asked which schools offered sales engineering courses and whether one had to be certified or become a member of an engineering society to be a sales engineer. Someone (I believe it was the Chief Sales Engineer) replied that they were proud of the quality of service they offered. The perverted idea of calling themselves engineers completely flew over his head.

Perhaps those guys are different. I was a sales engineer. I started as a "regular" engineer, but could speak coherently in front of a customer, so I got promoted. Don't discount the engineering needed to make something work on the fly while the customer is watching.

but most sales people would just not be able to pull that off. If they truly are "engineers," then all the more power to them. If they are not, then it is mislabeling at best and an insult to the true engineers at worst. Trust me - I am all too familiar with making something that a sales person promised, but that the equipment should not be able to do, work on the fly in front of the customer.

He comes to your house visits for a while and when he leaves your freezer is full and you are paying monthly fees for the food.

How about the following

Value Stream Champion
Human Resources Business Partner
European Product Specialist
Distinguished Member of Technical Staff

I have had many job titles, but what do you think I do with a job title like this then.....

Business Systems Manager

Answers on a post card...

That's nothing I'm a "Senior Business Systems Manager"....guess I am getting on a bit.

CPO....

Coffe Pot Operator....

Really a tourist travelling aboard freight airliner...

A rather funny one that I saw was for an engineer who worked in special projects and for some time was simply called "Special Projects Engineer". Anyhow he was good at what he did and eventually he got his own office and a new job title, which was, "General Engineering Specialist".

A "general specialist"?

After 50 years of full time work, I have realised that jobs divide up as follows. your job fits in this list, if you have any doubt about which grade, then you are in the lower one.
grade 1. labourers - only minimal skills required.
grade 2. skilled - that is bus & taxi drivers, gardeners, shop staff, office managers. firemen,
policemen
grade 3. artisan/ tradesmen - plumbers, electricians, gas fitters, car mechanics.
grade 4. professionals - jobs that generally need a specific degree level qualification.
and some considerable experience. - department managers, scientific assistants,
personnel officers.
grade 5. Professional Vocational - Lawyers, Chartered accountants, Doctors, Nurses, Chartered engineers

following from the item before, the name given to a job is little more than fluff, generally the longer and grander the title, the more junior and unimportant the occupier of it.

I agree totally with tbdavies. Many years ago my home town redesignated the guys that pickup the trash from garbagemen to sanitation engineers. Today, they are one of the highest paid of city employees to include the jobs that actually require an engineering degree. Seems that the fancier the name for the most menial of jobs is a gateway to higher pay.

Compare "Western Director of Strategic Account Acquisition" to "Boss" and your comment rings truer than life.

May will disagree about your personal interpretation of this.However there in is a point to be made.A HR director categorizing job roles would love to make the system simplistic.However the remuneration and degree of skill is market related.The biggest fraud in my view is the role of the salesman.Missing from Grade I on your scale.

To sell a job to a salesman with more responsibility,the job role maybe changed to Business development manager.A sales man continues in this new title role having no understanding what business development is or has any business qualifications to do it.Really what has been done is renaming a sales roll to 'sales development' a grade 2 job on this scale.

Clearly to do business development you need high skill,qualifications, and judgement.

A disappointing article on so many levels -
1. That this view gets traction and will be believed as gospel by everyone under 35 .
2. Ignores the fact that so often the Job Title is never designed by the occupier of the position so why blame them or ignore them.
3. Business is in the business of recruiting and keeping staff relatively happy that's why no-one I know would welcome the word 'Sanitation' in their job title or be attracted to applying for it and by your judgement that word appearing once would be enough to cut the application without further investigation.
4. Hence if you read and understand the point in 3 above the recruitment industry has to share at least a portion of the blame for this happening because they are too lazy to do proper analysis themselves.
5. If Toni truly does gloss over inflated titles she reveals herself as being a less than competent recruiter-analyst because she is guilty of an assumption that is not always true - she dismisses potentially brilliant candidates and that means two losses a) the hiring company b) the potential employee and for that she expects to be paid over market rates .. hard to understand how she is going the extra mile.
6. If I felt that way I would make an effort to at least find out from the applicant and the past employer what that meant. It's so dismissive to tell the market that one should apply this way or that because it forces everyone into the same basket - promotes mediocrity in job application and job assessment but I guess that is where this world is heading - less and less interest in working hard and more and more interest in getting other people to do your work for you.
7. In fairness the Recruitment Agency model does not exist for the benefit of the applicant (albeit they need decent applicants) be under no illusion most will never bother with an application unless it means the agency can make dollars out of you.

Ken
Director
IT Consultancy
Melbourne

I disagree, I think that Toni has given good advice. The volume of resumes/CVs being evaluated by hiring managers tend to be large. Many job openings have as many as 1000 respondants of varying qualifications. In that respect, there is a greater tendancy to filter the stack of resumes and reject most due to appearance of the style, font, spelling and other minor criteria.

I've been in a situation where I looked over a stack of resumes, I started reading slowly at first to give the applicant a chance and after a few just looked for certain items with a quick read. Knowing that the majority of hiring managers are doing the same thing is quite instructive in designing a better resume. A good resume will pass through the filters and get into the possible hire pile easier than a poorly constructed and long resume can.

1) You're given an "inflated" title.
2) You decide to look for a new job, but you read on TR that putting your title on your resume will get you ignored.

What's the next step? Lie about your job title? I'm sure we've already had the "People who lie on their resumes" post ...

I'm guessing you either didn't read the article or didn't pay enough attention. Those are the only two ways I can think of that you could've missed the following: "Of course, you can???t help what title you are given in a corporation. I recommend just putting in parentheses what the weird title actually translates to."

Any company that judges a resume based on 'titles' or formal education is not worth working for to begin with, it illustrates how clueless they are with regard to the hiring process.

I've had an interview where the guy said, "your job titles all relate to XXXXXXX, but we are looking for YYYYYYYYY." The accomplishments and other roles were actually YYYYYYYYY focused. So I chuckled and said, "well clearly we are not looking for each other but I appreciate your time all the same." then left.

Who the hell wants to work for such a clueless clown? I sure as hell won't!

A good employer seeks out hidden qualities by reading between the lines on a resume. Can't process 200 applications in 3 weeks that way? Then don't.

Once people start relying less on misleading software, bots and incompetent staff to hire, they will build a better team.

point out a very important point - job seekers need to think about this when they create their resumes. With so many looking for work, anything an applicant can do to make it easier for recruiters to see what the applicant offers is truly valuable.

I would like it if the article took it a step further, by providing some elaboration on how an applicant can avoid the pitfalls of a silly or vague title. Maybe some examples, but even better would be a list of title buzz words that make a recruiter's eyes glaze over. We all need to hear concrete examples from a recruiter's point of view. I hope Toni can provide a follow-up article on this.

There are plenty of employment sites that list key buzzwords that employers have punched into their cheesy screening software.
There are even some where you can PAY to buy buzzwords a specific company is looking for.

Problem is, there are also planted buzzwords just to find people trying to scam their systems.

How about just writing a good resume and learning how to apply for a job without a blind email blast each day? How about getting on a phone and looking for work where there's no ad placed? How about knocking a door and introducing yourself to an actual employer, instead of hoping HR will notice you in the pile? Why does everyong think there's a wall up and they don't know how to get around it?

The key reason some us us are working and others are not is that some of us know HOW to find work through more conventional methods than relying on HR staff finding us in a sea of BS applicants. Someone with job hunting SKILLS can move from job to job and not notice there's a hiring problem going on.

I remember when I got my first job; at a steakhouse the next town over from where I lived. Walked in, got the job. My second job was the same story. Walked in, got the job. I dunno if this would work for a "career" however.

Nowadays, many places simply direct would-be employees to their website to apply on-line. My last place of employment would get people that came in all the time looking to talk to a manager or a supervisor about getting hired. The answer was always the same; "Head to our website and fill out an application." Ahhh...the days we live in....

I believe the reason for this is most supervisory positions outside of HR simply don't have the time to talk with every potential candidate that walks through the door. It's easier to let Bob in HR handle it.

"File 'em all, let Bob sort 'em out..."

A good hat is always a good addition!

I'm not kidding.

Wonder what he would have done on a cloudy day.

Then he could have been Director of beneath a steel sky thinking.

Do you think Patrick Swayze or Charlie Sheen were ever managed by a Director of Red Dawn thinking?

Sorry. I'll stop now...

Here I'm the

???Alleged Boss and Official Scape Goat???

When something goes wrong I'm responsible no matter what it is so if the dog has kittens it's my fault.

Col