If you came across the job title “manager of first impressions,” you’d likely be confused about what that person does. At one company, that title belongs to the receptionist.
Kim Dawson, the director of employee experience at Austin, Texas-based HR tech firm YouEarnedIt, works with that company. She says that the receptionist has been with that organization a long time and doesn’t have any interest in leaving, but this change made her feel better about her job title.
Besides making someone feel good, how much do job titles really matter? We spoke with several experts to determine their relevance and discovered key takeaways.
Titles are important but not everything. Sarah Stoddard, a public relations associate at Glassdoor, says that job titles are important and relevant across both industries and companies, and that they should be considered in negotiations when talking about benefits, perks, salary and so on. Your job title can and should be unique to the skill set and level of expertise you have for that company, she adds.
That said, what someone actually does in their line of work matters more than the title they’re given — and that’s what good recruiters will keep in mind when it comes to looking at candidates.
“An experienced screener or recruiter will quickly look at a title and even more quickly go to the content of a job,” says Jim Link, chief human resources officer at employment agency Randstad North America.
If you want to change your current title, communicate effectively. You need to develop a relationship with your manager before you can approach them with the request for a job title change. This means understanding what your responsibilities are and how well you’re performing, i.e., a culture of continuous feedback, according to Dawson.
The future of work — not just titles — is unclear. Creative titling — job titles that may sound ludicrous, from chief happiness officer to digital prophet — is something that’s come up in the last four or five years, since the economy started rebounding and wages started to recover.
Link adds that there’s a lot of employment disruption going on right now, between the rise of the agile workforce and younger generations demanding more flexibility on where work gets done. The whole movement for agility and collaboration as the next workforce trend may make job titling as we know it obsolete.
Dawson says it’s hard to imagine a time when we don’t have titles, attributing it to the simple fact that they’re intended to tell you what someone does. Ultimately, it’s clear that job titles are whatever a company makes of them.
“I think that job titles will change as cultures within companies change,” Dawson adds. “I love the idea of flexibility with job titles, provided it’s not frivolity.”
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Yes, Job Titles Matter — but They Aren’t Everything originally appeared on usnews.com
