Many creative networkers have experienced problems with traditional job titles and career ladders. While names are necessary for communication and a sense of progress, by publishing work profiles and project credits instead of focusing on official titles and office politics, people pay attention to actual services offered and reputations earned.

Job titles and project roles can have a significant impact on the clarity, branding, status and behavior of employees. People’s primary concern becomes climbing the corporate ladder instead of doing a great job. 

Jurgen Appelo

Why would someone create a work profile?

• By using a work profile a person can briefly describe his or her set of services within the context of an organization
• They can adopt job titles that add value to their personal brands.

When offering people job titles here are a few things to take into account:

1: Make official job titles as “wide” as possible. Titles have a tendency to multiply like rabbits. Resist any temptation to end up with a list of titles containing Creative Directors, Front-end Designers, Interaction Designers, Interaction Directors, Lead Creative Designers, etc… Instead give everyone the title Designer and allow people to have different roles in different projects to satisfy their desire to distinguish themselves.

2: Do not inflate official job titles with predicates such as Senior, Head, President, Lead, Director, Vice, and Master. There should be no Senior Vice President of Office Management. As a job title, Office Managers good enough.

3: Avoid glamorous job titles, such as Eviction Technician (instead of Bouncer) or Transparent-Wall Maintenance Engineer (Window Cleaner) [bbc, “25 of Readers’ Inflated Job Titles”] unless you have a compelling reason to do so from the perspective of branding your organization. There’s nothing wrong with the job title Social Media Guru if you want your company to be seen as technically pretentious and socially awkward. Stick to standardized titles as much as possible and leave the fancy names for project roles.