I often hear young female professionals being dissatisfied with their job title, or wanting another one. Like it is the holy grail. It is often their first need when it comes to their job, followed by a pay rise. Don’t get me wrong – I have been there myself too, for probably the first 10 years of my career. But I don’t care anymore. What changed? And why do we attach so much importance to our job titles?
First of all, in a society where image is overpresent thanks to social media and reality TV, we all feel the need to BE something in our work. And a great something preferably. We wear it like a label on our clothes. It defines what we do and often how successful we feel. We need it! It’s like our permanent business card, laid out in every one of the hundreds of e-mails that we send.
Secondly we often need a job title to define our ‘space’ in the working world – have clear lines of reporting, fitting in a grading system, knowing where we sit vs. our peers, and finally knowing our worth when trading jobs. That is quite handy, however the tricky challenge here is that the same title can mean so many different things to various companies. A small business might hire a Marketing Manager to do all their ‘operational’ marketing, whilst a large company might call their Marketing Manager the person who calls the shots on big budgets and the media strategy.
So many other titles open themselves to a very broad interpretation : ‘specialist’, ‘executive’ (what rank is that?), ‘coordinator’… you add to the list. As our workplaces evolve with technology, our job titles take on a flexibility pill to absorb whatever you will be required to do in the position. And we are left wondering which one(s) best define what we are…for good reason.
And that’s the crucial point here. What are you? The issue is when we attach ourself, our skills, to a job title. You are not your job title. So far from it. You are full of possibilities, some of those currently untapped, so a job title is really like a dress for a period of time. Who and what you are underneath is much broader, richer and you wear the dress – not the opposite. You will wear that dress for a while, then change. And you will still be you. You won’t even look back at the old dress anyway.
It took me years and many changes of job titles (thank you forever changing workplaces!) to understand this. Now my job title would be one of the last things I care about when looking at a job. Because I care so much more about how my skills can be used, how I will contribute to the organisation, and how this will make me feel in return.
So my advice for you is this: if you are desperate to upgrade your title, upgrade your mindset first. Maybe you are already at that level and you don’t know it (or you keep telling yourself it’s not true). List your skills, strengths and experience in terms of achievements and results, and you will see where you are at. No label can sum this up appropriately. Know in yourself where you are at, and be content with that. Because that’s what you need to sell yourself for any upcoming role, the job title will only get you 2 words in into a much larger conversation.
So when you focus on a job title, ask yourself what’s the need behind your thinking. The answer to fulfilling this need might not be a new job title. You’ve got this!
