Does your job title matter?

Yes. 

Obviously it does, in some ways. People with some job titles tend to get paid more than people with other job titles. Some levels of job title tend to correspond to different scopes of responsibility (e.g. people management, function management). And, at least in some sense, your job title is an approximation of the work you spend every day doing. 

(There is a but coming). 

I would never say that job titles don’t matter because I see how people have responded to my own job titles. When I first got promoted to director, I started getting recruiters reaching out with director-level roles. I went on a podcast and one of the questions was “how did you become a director so young,” a question that implies something important about the title vs the work that the title is supposed to represent. The same happened when I went from “director of content” to “director of growth marketing,” and again with the promotion to VP — sure, I still have a recruiter in my inbox offering up a “senior user acquisition specialist” (?) job, but I also get to peek behind doors I haven’t seen into before. And it will be easier to get my next VP job than it would have been to jump into one from director. 

Plus, I know how I look at resumes. As I write this, I’m at the tail end of a hiring process that meant looking through 600+ director applicants. And whether this should be how it works or not, I had to constantly remind myself not to focus only on applicants who have previously had a director title. The director proxy is standing in for something, even if the relationship isn’t 1:1, and when you have to filter 600 applicants down to 20 interviews, it’s tempting to narrow the list however you can. It’s especially important to avoid that temptation because of the role titles can play in reinforcing the inequitable.

There are some companies that use their title structures in ways that piss me off (and I’ll rant about garbage “career pathing” structures another time). Right now I’m thinking of one in particular that keeps everyone at “manager” or “senior manager” even when their role would be called director everywhere else. I hear they still pay at director level, but it’s going to be harder than it needs to be for their people to find equivalent leveling/compensation when they move to their next gig. Which sucks. 

But. 

You should not overindex on what your title is over the course of the next six months. Focusing too much on the words in your title (not your level, and there are exceptions) is counterproductive and has high potential to impede your growth — simply because it affects where you put your attention and what you work on. 

Specialist, manager, senior manager, director, senior director, vice president, SVP, C-suite. That’s the part of the title that matters most. 

Some companies use terms like “lead” or “marketer III,” which is nonstandard and can be tricky when you go for your next job, but the broader point here is that the words of your title matter less than the level of your title. 

As a hiring manager, these titles are all the same to me:

• Content lead

• Senior content marketer

• Senior content manager

• Head of content (if not a people manager)

• Content experience manager

These are different:

• Content marketing specialist

• Content marketing manager

• Director of content marketing

I’m talking principally about marketing roles and conventions in marketing titles, but some element applies across jobs and industries. Outside of titles that show you practice a specific discipline (e.g. SEO manager, social media manager), the exact words of your title don’t matter anywhere close to as much as what your title says about the scope of your responsibilities in your work — which is what the level is for. In hiring processes, the level in your title does its job by helping people place your experience, then it stops mattering once you dig into the details of your work, then it matters again when you talk about salary. 

I’ve had people ask me “do you think [this title] or [this title] sounds better,” and I usually say that they sound exactly the same. Hiring managers you want to work for see through titling anyway. But leveling is more likely to be a signal about the type of work and influence you’re capable of doing, and your level really does matter.

Even then, it’s not where you should put your principal focus. 

Your career growth comes first from the scope of work you can do and then from your title. Be careful about the order you pursue. 

I have heard these types of statements from so many people:

• I want to be a director in the next 6 months

• By August of next year I will be a people manager

• I’m going to ask my boss about a director promotion (note: for the third time)

I think this is misguided. You are free to disagree with me. You don’t want to be promoted into a role you’re not quite ready for, flounder because the expectations are suddenly different (not necessarily harder, but different in surprising ways), and become a middle manager scrabbling to hold onto your position, right? And I’m not saying that that’s what will happen, but I am saying that there are a lot of those people in the world and they aren’t especially fun to work with. 

When you get promoted to your dream role — which will happen! I fully, legitimately believe in you — you don’t want it to be something you’re reaching for. You want to be absolutely crushing it and then get promoted and absolutely crush it even harder. You want your promotion and the maneuverability it grants you inside your organization to magnify your impact on the business because you get access to more resources, and in turn to give you one helluva story to share in your next job interview. And then when you get that job (which you will), you’ll also crush it. 

I think setting title-based goals is self limiting because it makes you think about the next 6 months to a year. But your career isn’t going to end a year from now, and you aren’t likely going to retire after your next job. Yes, achieving a title that represents a higher level role can have an impact on your career — but if you double down on your skillset, both deepening and broadening, you’ll build experience you’ll still be using a decade from now. 

Shortly after the printing of her book Under a Glass Bell (on her own press purchased with borrowed money and worked with her own hands, and that of a friend), but before it was written up in the New Yorker and became her first work to achieve literary acclaim, Anaïs Nin received this note in a letter from Henry Miller.

“I have heard you spoken of in the most remote spots. Your name is already legendary. I had heard that you had lost faith in the publishing and printing of your own books. I hope that is not so. It would be just at the wrong moment. It is your weakness, if I may say so delicately, to lose faith at the wrong moment. I beg you, be firm. Part of the act of creating is in discovering your own kind. They are everywhere. But don’t look for them in the wrong places.” 

You’ll get that job title. You will. Even if your boss sucks. Even if your company sucks. You might get promoted at this job, and you might not. While you are at a company, it seems like a reflection of the state of the world, but it represents ultimately only the state of the company. This will not be your last job, and when you decide to put yourself on the market, there will be people who notice your work if it genuinely shines above the rest of the pack. 

As a friend of mine likes to say — honestly, a little too often to the point where it gets sort of annoying — “real recognize real.”

And at the risk of coming across as a massive ass, I reached director less than 5 years after graduating college, and this is why: 

• In those 5 years, I read an average of 82 books per year (410 books total)

• I started a side project that hit 250,000 visitors with its first post, and eventually scaled to a consistent 30k/month in organic traffic. As part of that project I also grew an email list, set up lead magnets, wrote website copy, and made online courses. 

• Cold emailed 100s of people to set up calls, review my work, or give me feedback on my resume

• I studied Google patents (which took hours) to understand the base level of how SEO worked. I wrote 100 headlines a day for a month, then 30 a day for another three months. I did the old-school copywriter thing of writing out high-performing sales letters by hand. I took online courses as fast as I could finish them. At one point when I had $4,000 in my bank account I spent $2,250 of it on an online course.

All of this is outside the performance of my actual jobs, where I tried to be a problem-solver instead of a task-solver. When I made director, there was a moment of self-advocacy — there was some debate about whether I should go straight to director or become a senior manager — and I’m glad I got the director title when I did. 

At the same time, I was always going make director at some point. 

I would never say don’t advocate for yourself, especially because I acknowledge the privilege in my background and know that some people face hurdles I have not faced. I just think self-advocacy comes second. You are welcome to disagree, but over and over I see the people who chase titles struggle (or reach their title and struggle in their new role) and the people who focus on radically leveling up their skills thrive.