Compelling job titles, ones that come off in a respected light and in a seemingly high seniority, have a habit of catching job seekers’ attention. You know, the ones with the words “senior”, “specialist” and “lead” attached. In fact, compelling job titles have been proven as an effective recruiting and retention tool.
Wouldn’t you rather have a job as a barista than a coffee maker? Or a genius at Apple rather than a technical support worker? Titles are important to job seekers, but what happens when the duties of the job don’t have you feeling as happy at the job as the title does?
Taking a good job title over your overall job happiness is a big risk. Despite your cool title and regardless of how exciting the recruiter made the job seem, when you start working at the office you could always find your job to be less than satisfying. A number of factors can be the cause of this such as not being challenged enough, being unappreciated or inflexible work hours.
There are ways to salvage a job you don’t like. In fact, you can use your good title as a source of motivation to live up to the hype and step up your work performance to move up even further among the ranks in your office. You can use your title as a launch pad to go from one job title to the next.
One reason why job seekers may seek a job with a great title is because even if you don’t like the job and you end up leaving the job, you’ll have a nice attractive title to put on your resume. This can only help your career prospects and having job experience along with a good title will help your chances of finding a more satisfying job.
Whether the job title compels you to live up to the hype and move further in your career or it just makes for a good resume booster, taking a job based on the title over the overall satisfaction is still a risky decision and one that should be considered carefully.
Have you ever accepted a job just to have a prestigious title, regardless of how much or how little you enjoyed the work? Please share in the comments below.
IMAGE: Courtesy of Flickr by Robert Scoble
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