What’s your job title?

So, in my experience with Corporate America, I’ve noticed that people have a lot of interesting job titles.  Some are confusing, some aren’t really true, and some just plain ol’ don’t make sense.  And, in case you were wondering, yes, this makes it very difficult to know what the people down the hall actually do for their careers. 

Experts in the field theorize that the reason for all of these BS titles is that Corporate America wants to confuse outsiders into taking it seriously, and wants to give its employees a false sense of ego inflation by doling out titles that sound impressive. 

In my experience, I’ve noticed that people’s BS titles typically fall into one of three categories, which I’ve outlined here for education purposes:

Um, could you explain what that means?

This is one of the most common buckets that BS job titles fall into.  Almost every day, either in e-mail signatures or in the company directory, I come across career titles that are basically meaningless to anyone outside the company. 

I won’t mention anyone’s actual title here, but it seem that some corporate titles are just a big bundle of ambiguity, like, “Initiatives Director,”  “Key Innovations Specialist,”  “Dynamic-Driven Consultant,” and “Manager of Directives.”  What does that actually mean?  Titles like this are so vague and convoluted that it’s almost always impossible to tell what the person does for a living. 

Note that you can make up your own BS, yet impressive-sounding job title simply by stringing a bunch of your fave corporate words together. 

How many vice presidents do we need?

This comprises yet another category of confusing job titles.  When I first started my job with Big Business, I was a bit perplexed.  It seemed that there were approximately 251 vice presidents for each area of the business.  This led me to think, “Why do we need that many?”  “Isn’t there usually only one?”  I mean, there aren’t multiple vice presidents of the United States.  There wasn’t more than one class vice president in school. 

This raises many a question in one’s mind.  Why are there so many vice presidents at work?  And if they’re all vice presidents, then who’s the president?  Is the CEO considered the president?  Is it the brand manager?  If something happens to the CEO, do all of the vice presidents assume his or her responsibilities?  And where exactly does the senior vice president come into play?  And why are there multiple SVP’s, too?  Can there be multiple CEO’s?  Can I be CEO?

Confusing, man.

But you’re not really a manager…

Here’s another confusing category of job titles.  I noticed when I first started in Corporate America that everybody has “manager” in his or her job description.  So, naturally, I assumed that these people were all manager-level employees, like my boss…aka, my manager.  So, come to find out, these people are managers only in the sense that they technically “manage” their own work , in that they complete it sometimes (and yes, in case you were wondering, I have the word “manager” in my job title :-P).

So does that mean I can call myself an executive because I “execute” my work projects?  Or am I a director because I can “direct” myself to work?

Hmm…

Corporate Word of the Week:

Choiceful (adj.) – This word appeared in a recent e-mail that I received about using the correct words in the branding of a new product release.  I believe the sentence was something like, “We need to be choiceful with our wording surrounding this launch.”  Um, I have news for you:  You need to be choiceful with your wording because choiceful isn’t a word.  Ha.