Question; do titles matter in today’s market? My answer is unequivocally No and Yes. I know. I know. My answer is almost as nebulous as titles are from one company to the next. Unfortunately, in today’s developing I.T. landscape job functions and the titles that are attached to them are an ever shifting landscape. It almost makes one long for the days when there were only a handful of titles in IT (or was that DP?). However, before we get too nostalgic though let’s remember that’s when everyone wrote COBOL or Assembler. Not much of an option and to be honest so while the titles’ fit the functions then they would come woefully short of being applicable today.

Let’s examine some of the new functional roles of the last 10-15 years that for the most part didn’t exist previously:

- Resources Manager: these are the Managers that oversee resource staffing of off-shore or outsourced I.T. staff. This is a phenomenon of the last 10 years most definitely.

- Chief Information Security Officer/ I.S. Security Architect: this used to be rolled up to Contingency Planning because hey, in 1992 half of Russia wasn’t trying to steal our identities to make millions in credit card fraud (no offense to Russian citizens).

- Enterprise Architect: Lots of folks now have this as their title on their resumes for their work in 1995, but trust me there were only like 5 in the U.S. back then (okay slight exaggeration).

- Relationship Manager: Another product of first outsourcing and now off-shore relationships.

- eCommerce/ Internet Marketing anything!

So it’s good that titles have evolved and they do matter right. Again not always and the reason is that when titles were simple & straight forward they defined your role was to you and companies that interviewed you.  However, with the plethora of titles today that frequently mean different things at different companies, recruiters and hiring managers who understand this and now spend more time digging into a resume and in the interview to understand what you really do. This is progress! However, you are now judged on the merit of what you do, not what you’re called.

Word of caution – It is very, very important in this new world that you take the time to write a strong, coherent and cogent resume (see earlier blog rants on terrible resume’s). Neither managers nor Headhunters take the time to dig into someone’s resume that doesn’t back it up with details of the specific functional role AND accomplishments.