Job Title Inflation

ARM10

I was looking around at the current job market to see if the 'grass is greener on the other side' and came upon an impressive sounding 5 word job title which included "Senior" and "Manager" in its arsenal.

So I wrote in for an informal discussion and asked where the position fits in their overall hierarchy. Turns out it's second bottom, 9 levels from the Chief Executive, with no direct reports, and no secretary / PA.

They're looking for someone who's "experienced", with "effective relationship management", to play a "leading role". Right. :laugh:

This organisation was (to their credit) quite transparent and forthcoming when questioned, but I'm sure there's lots of employers who paint a rosy picture just to attract talent.

How do people stop themselves from being sucked into time wasting job applications / interviews ? Especially since salaries are often not advertised and subject to negotiation for senior positions. :think:

InsideInsurance

As a contractor, not interested in job titles nor how far removed I am from the CEO but the much more basic consideration of pay.

Any job that has signed off will have a maximum salary against it. Yes there may be a chance of it being renegotiated for the ideal candidate but if the approved amount is £25k and you are wanting £75k there is little point going forward.

Personally I am very direct (both pre and post making the switch to contracting) and simply contact the agent/ employer and ask. If they wont answer what the ceiling on salary is then in 90% of cases I would walk unless it happened to be an organisation that I knew paid well.

I do agree that there is an ever inflating level of job titles though. When I started my career you would get "trainee", "junior", no special prefix, "senior" and "lead" grades... now I have 6 people working for me as BAs or DAs and all are "senior" (that said they do all have a lot of experience but still feels odd having a department of nothing but senior people.)

rosered1963

Hi OP.

I came a serious cropper over job title inflation. Four years ago, I applied for a job that said "Administrator" for a charity. Administrator used to be a senior role - I did a job with this title 16 years ago running a university department. Now it seems to mean "clerk/PA/Secretary".

I took the job without a job description (my own stupid fault) as it was for a small charity that had not yet written the description. I took them on trust about what kind of post it was. I left my existing job, (a good job but I needed a change). On the first day, someone I hadn't been introduced to ask me to type her letters. I made a massive mistake all because I misunderstood the new meaning of "administrator". My husband recently applied for a job with the title "travel consultant" which turned out to be answering calls in a call centre - nothing to do with being a consultant. You live and learn. maybe younger people are less llikely to be fooled than me. It used to be very clear from the title what level the job was.

ARM10

Interesting responses.

I'd say the jobs / work in my career which turned out best were from personal recommendations followed by an informal discussion over dinner or coffee. Sometimes this was several meetings over a period of weeks. The job title and duties envisaged were usually up for negotiation. Worth mentioning these were large organisations.

Recruitment is much less personal these days and employers don't make nearly as much effort to see if you're a good fit for the organisation. They just advertise with the best sounding job title possible to attract applicants.

cashbackproblems

Like you wouldnt believe...i work in an administration team and 4/6 of us are classed as Associate Directors! Its prevalent in banking.

InsideInsurance

Not always, a former banking client used to have Marketing Executives and Project Executives which from my experience is a fairly common job title meaning something below a manager but the bank's board decided they all had to be renamed as consultants in case people confused them for a member CxO grade person because they had executive in their title

westv

cashbackproblems wrote: »

Like you wouldnt believe...i work in an administration team and 4/6 of us are classed as Associate Directors! Its prevalent in banking.

A bit like Vice President in US companies?

cashbackproblems

westv wrote: »

A bit like Vice President in US companies?

Yep the manager was "vice president" and he is managing a small team in a business with over 40,000 employees worldwide..!

ARM10

Another problem of junior positions with senior executive job titles is you appear over-qualified when applying for your next job. Employers hesitate to take on someone who was "Vice President" for 5 years filling the role of "Team Leader" in their organisation.

davidlizard

I have noticed in recent years at our place, most of the handle turning administration type jobs now have the word "manager" in their title.

As a consequence, many of the people who were genuine "managers" a few years back are now calling themselves "directors", presumably because they don't want people thinking they are just another jumped up office clerk.

And similarly, those that were genuine "directors" are now calling themselves "executives" as they don't want people thinking they are simply some jumped up manager.

londoner1998

Oh Yes... I was a victim too: 'Creative Executive', which in reality it meant little more than researcher/runner/assistant producer... picking up the bits and pieces that no one else wanted/had the time to do plus any odd requests and dirty jobs that came along. Needless to say, crap pay too.

Luckily for me, I loved my job and decided to make the most of it, so I got stuck in and took on as much as I could, getting projects off the ground on things that needed improving and forging relationships with senior managers that turned out to be not just hugely useful, but also really enjoyable form the personal point of view. I ended up doing half the job of some of the producers, just because the work was there and I wanted to learn and move on. Not that they recognised that, but it was priceless to get more experience and improve the list of achievements. But to begin with, I really had to explain what I did, because people thought I was a Head Honcho.

Following my redundancy and subsequent job search, I had to explain quite a few times why I was changing fields and how I wouldn't get bored in these new jobs. Once I was turned down from a Managing Editor job because of my perceived 'seniority'.

But in the end it worked out for me. I have since learned not to be impressed or carried away with a job title and to look very, very carefully and critically to job descriptions before applying. Nine times out of ten I approach the hiring manager or company for a chat about the role prior to submitting the application. It lloks good and creates an interestin them and also gives me a clearer picture of what I am going for. No more 'job title inflation'.

Ax