Yes, Virginia. Titles do matter.

I've had many conversations on the topic of job titles and their importance in corporate America recently and I wanted to share with you my perspective. For quite some time it's been fashionable to say that titles are unimportant and there are some very good reasons why ignoring titles might be a good thing. But on this topic I need to go against the grain and say that unfortunately titles are very important especially during a job search and I can prove it! Read on.

Generally speaking looking at history there was a long period of time when titles were paramount. This is way back when companies were rigidly hierarchically structured and job descriptions were straightforward and more or less standardized across corporate America. Back when, for example, "Vice President" was rare and meant something about scope of responsibility, influence, experience, organization size and salary. There were strict established protocols regarding engaging your manager's manager or someone else's manager. Organizations of any significant size or success were never very "flat".

Then (my guess) sometime during the recession of the early 1990s, as in any recession, employers needed to find ways of squeezing more productivity from a shrinking and depressed workforce (editor's note: sound familiar?). They couldn't hire more resources or pay their current resources more money. So what did they start doing? Employers did the cheap thing and doubled people's work, gave them raise-less promotions with new fancy titles. Essentially they "enhanced" their titles. This phenomenon is known as title inflation. (editor's note: the linked article claims that title inflation really began back in the 1970s which I can believe. But I also believe it accelerated in the early 1990s. My only proof is anecdotal though.) What title inflation did was devalue ALL job titles except ones where some type of certification is necessary such as Doctor or Lawyer.

Almost in parallel it also became "cool" to be a flat organization. In the working world "hierarchy" automatically meant "bureaucracy" and "inefficiency". To be "flat" equaled being "efficient" which I also don't believe is automatically true at all. 

With everyone running around with fancy titles this title devaluation created the belief system that titles are unimportant and that other things such as salary and job satisfaction are very important. And those are very important but not at the expense of the title. Why? Well I'm not in the recruitment industry but I do know many recruiters. If you ask them most will tell you that  especially in a poor economy when a hiring manager is doing a job search for a particular position, for example "Vice President", they get a deluge of resume responses from candidates that have held that title before why would they bother to consider someone that never held that position even in name? Right there you've been weeded out because of a lack of a title. Additionally a lot of the filtering these days is done by computer via keyword search. You may have the most relevant experience in the world for a particular position but if the recruiter's resume filter doesn't find the words "Vice President" you and your resume won't even get a passing glance. Done and done.

There are exceptions of course. Start up companies are far more flexible at looking beyond titles but mid-size to large companies don't bother. Why should they given the influx of candidates?

Another big exception is networking. If you have a strong, positive connection to a hiring manager that will also likely trump the lack of a title.

But titles do matter. There - I said it. Mind you lots of people I deeply respect, including past mentors, assure me that titles don't matter but I respectfully and humbly (and unfortunately) disagree. It is simply not what I've experienced or am hearing from folks in the field.

So if you are in receipt of a title-enhanced, raise-free promotion or job offer don't be so quick to reject it on that basis alone because it may open doors in your future that would otherwise be shut.

If anyone out there can argue otherwise I'd love to hear it! This is definitely an area where I wish I was wrong.