This month, Lee Xieli wonders why impressive job titles are bandied about like they’re free. Well, they are when you exclude costs of printing new name cards.

What’s up with job titles these days? Does it really matter what is printed on your business card? Apparently so. If I throw a pebble randomly at someone right now, chances are 11 out of 10 of them would have the word “manager” on their business cards. If not, they’d be iPhone users. Then they’d be too busy playing with their precious phones to come after me for throwing a pebble at them.

In a flat or small organisation, it’s almost impossible to have an impressive-sounding job title because there isn’t much leeway to move up the ranks. But the corporate culture here is such that whenever someone introduces themselves as a “director or VP of something”, we automatically go googly eyed. Next, we’d be falling over ourselves trying to cozy up to this seemingly high-flying executive. The title might sound wonderful but sometimes the job responsibilities are no different from a manager’s. An HR professional working in a bank even admitted to me privately that his title was recently bumped up from “manager” to “AVP” with no change in his job scope. Strangely, an HR practitioner at a government sector said the same to me. So there isn’t technically a career progression unless, of course, you’re in a career of collecting job titles.

Then there’s the IT professional who heads the entire technical unit at a local firm. Sounds absolutely impressive until you realise she is literally the only one there. Which is great, because she doesn’t need to constantly motivate the IT software, copier machines and stacks of A4 paper to exceed their potential everyday. There is also a group president of a growing local franchise who enjoys bumping job titles up for his new hires. Only recently, he promoted someone to SVP of general affairs, a newly created department, to take charge of delegating office errands and ensuring everyone meets their deadlines. Being the only person in the team, this glorified office boy would generally get his own coffee, if not the boss’s slippers.

But sales departments are the worst offenders. It’s only in their world where account or sales executives’ titles are obsolete. These days, there are entire teams full of sales managers, led by directors, invading the corporate world.

Using inflated job titles as a carrot to keep people happy during a recession or when there is no pay raise is a motivational tactic as old as time. Yes, preying on the employee’s mind to subconsciously influence them to work harder is nothing new. As your HR would tell you, it’s much cheaper to print new name cards than adjusting the entire salary package. But the whole impressive-sounding job title lark actually works. It gives people a sense of pride in their jobs. Why do you think Apple call its technical support consultants “geniuses”? Or why Starbucks refers its employees as “partners”.

But there are companies such as Unilever and General Electric that are non-believers in bandying impressive job titles about. While they have generic titles across the company for certain levels such as director and VP, they mostly rely on an internal job grading which differs from the usual industry practice. Senior managers at these companies would be classified as “directors” if they had worked at other companies. But it doesn’t matter to them, said Lek Siok Keng, regional HR leader of General Electric Southeast Asia, because they are still paid according to the market rates.

Steven Gross, vice president of human resources for Unilever South East Asia and Australasia, tells me there are plenty of people in his company who do not care about titles as well. That’s even though it does cause a bit of confusion to outsiders at times. “I’m a HR leader and people always ask ‘Are you a director?’ but my team who reports to me are HR directors of their countries,” he says. “So is the title too ‘big’?”

Local construction firm HSL Constructor’s executive director Charles Quek feels otherwise. He had his employees re-examine their job designations as part of an organisational restructure. “Some people behave differently when they are designated differently. Your titles matter a lot in what you want them to do.”

Anyway, it’s not as if a less impressive-sounding job title would hinder your next career move. Unless of course, you plan to impress the good-looking stranger at a business networking event. In the end, what matters most is the amount of experience you’ve acquired and obviously, a pay package which reflects your current job responsibility.

xielil@humanresourcesonline.net