June 14th, 2012 | 
Author: Everyone knows that each company has its own list of job titles given to employees. The job title you get in your current company may not be the same as that of your previous one, even though your responsibilities and duties remain the same. Companies tend to make up their own list of titles, and many of these reflect their corporate culture. Some companies make up creative names in order to make their employees feel better and more importantly, about their job. This sort of creativity may be good while you are in your company, but it does not work so well while hunting for new jobs.
To understand why the creative and seemingly powerful job title you had in your previous job should be omitted, you need to look into the basic purpose of a resume, which is to push you to the first interview. The resume does not secure an offer for you, nor does it get you a job; it only gets you to the first round of interviews for the job. In order for your resume to do this, you need to make sure that it is seen and reviewed by as many recruiters as possible and not removed at just a glance. This brings us to another important piece of information related to your job title, which is that recruiters look for candidates by the standard job title in the industry.
What are industry standard job titles?
If the standard job title of your job is a ‘database analyst’ or senior associate’, make sure that you use only that on your resume, and not your company-issued titles, no matter how fancy they may sound. If you look at these industry titles, you would find that they are quite generic. A ‘Senior’ designation on an industry standard job title, like the example above, can limit the number of people who are seeing it and reviewing.
This difference in treatment is primarily due to the pay. A senior associate will not get the interview because they would not be seen in the first place, and so there would not be any chance to negotiate pay. Of course, some recruiters feel that applicants should add their company-given title on their resume. If you want to appease both kinds of recruiters, you can add your company title to your resume and then mention the industry standard one and bold-face and italicize it. After this, write briefly about your work responsibilities and duties.
Knowing how to search for positions
If you have ever searched a position on job-hunting websites, you would know that the most important keyword to add is the position title, after which come other details like pay, geography, etc. When you type in your company title, you may not find any hits because that title is meant for your company only. Now, if you type in your industry standard job title, you would get more hits because it is more common. The same thing is done by recruiters, and you might be missing out on some great opportunities because your company-issued job title is not showing up in search results.
Conclusion
Some people feel that they deserve a fancy-looking title, and never take it away from their resume even if it is just a company-issued title. If you are in this group, you should get your ego out of the way and focus more on getting the interview. After all, you would not have any titles or pay to negotiate if recruiters and search engines look past your resume without even noticing it.
Posted in Advice and Articles
