Job Title I Hate the Most
January 6th, 2010 by Lois Melbourne
Job titles are used to describe, in a few words, how a person can help you professionally, right? I have a pet peeve with a particular job title which I feel is completely misleading. I hate the job title Financial Planner. It has nothing to do with the job financial planners actually do. I know there are more regulations in the financial industry then you can shake a grumpy stick at, but this one drives me nuts.
A financial planner does not plan my financials. They can’t (don’t or won’t) tell me if I should refinance my mortgage and make it 30 years instead of 15 years so that I can double-up on the principle without changing my monthly expense. They don’t remind me to get an additional rider on my insurance to protect my financial investment in a new valuable collection. They certainly don’t help plan what percent of my income is best spent on each area of my household expenditures. Now, THAT would be financial planning.
I’m picking on this job title because it really does bug me personally. But I also bring up the topic so that HR and hiring managers can think about the job titles they use and see if they’re misleading the organization, confusing the customer, or setting false hopes for the employee. How can you possibly begin skills and competency assessment projects if you have not started with the basics, such as clear, concise job titles?
I’m a big fan of the fun and illustrative titles – but they’re not for everybody. I love the Chief Listening Officer, the Coffee Googlet; I could change my title from CEO to Queen Bee or Chief Conductor, but I think CEO is simply less confusing.
If you have pet peeves for job titles, recommendations for cleaning up our job titles, or a super cool example of a job title, please comment.
Cheers,
Lois
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You can probably add the job title of Vice President to that list. Particularly in the Finance world where everyone seems to be a VP, but they do not actually run a budget, manage employees or a make any decisions!
I agree that companies need to get the job titles right. They need to have some meaning to people inside AND outside the organization and it needs to tie back to what a person actually does in relation to what a company needs. Sometimes companies do not even know this at a high-level. So they need to break down in a specific manner the skills at that position, which can in turn give management insight into what the job title should be.
I touch on this a little bit in my latest blog post on the WingSpread website. Check it out, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Your piece on the ‘Misalignment of Talent” is great and completely agree that trust and expectations are very important factors in creating the great team. The trust and expectations must go both up and down the hierarchy.
cheers,
Lois
Lois, I agree on your note. Another title that I don’t particularly like is Salesperson or New Business Development. The most important role of the “Salesperson” is to serve the client and client’s don’t generally like to receive calls from new “Salespeople”.
This is why I choose to call the people who serve our clients Client Advocates as it clearly describes the main purpose of the role is to serve on behalf or the client. We also find it brings down barriers during introductions.
Thank you for your blog!
Best,
Eve Mayer Orsburn
Business Development is a very interesting title too, I agree. I see many people flinch at that job title. I have found that only a salesperson that is really a customer advocate, could earn the right to use that as a title. I like the idea of setting the expectation for a position, by putting a title like Customer Advocate in place. It sets the tone for the rest of the job description and activities.
Cheers,
Lois
Lois – I like the point you bring up about titles possibly “misleading the organization, confusing the customer, or setting false hopes for the employee.” KISS is always better.
Talking about titles reminds me of a fun story: I used to work in a place where my 3 HR partners were depressed for many reasons, in part due to tons of hard and valuable work and little to no recognition by our senior leadership. In our workplace all the recognition went to front line staff. I couldn’t stand it so I thought long and hard about the most outstanding professional characteristic of each one and over a weekend I selected titles for them and made matching certificates of recognition, framed and gift wrapped them. I made matching congratulations cards too. I checked the VP’s calendar to see when she would be in town and blocked off time on all of our calendars for a meeting. In the body of the invitation I stated the reason for the meeting was to discuss employee morale. At the time of the meeting everyone went in, sat down and I took out the awards and presented them to the:
CIO – Chief Intelligence Officer (HRG with amazing investigative technique)
CMO – Chief Motivation Officer (HRT born with sunshine in her soul)
COO – Chief Organizational Officer (HRC that could organize something out of nothing)
The VP went along with everything and we had cupcakes and fun. The next day she called me and told me she loved me and she had learned a valuable lesson. She also said I was wasting my time in the organization because it wasn’t going to change. I appreciated her candor and after 8 years I knew she was right.
I moved on to a place that not only allows but encourages me to make a difference.
It is so important that we are in a place where we can make the difference we set out to make. It sounds like the move was a good one.
cheers
Lois
Hi Lois –
I was recently with a company who used the term “Associates” as opposed to employees. The CEO felt it was important to make everyone a part of the team rather than employees. Frankly, most “associates” associated that title with working at Walmart.
Another title is Team Lead. Actually, I like that a lot. There is a difference between leadership and management. We promote managers when we really should be promoting leaders. If you want to promote someone to supervise, call them department or group supervisors.
On this notion of leaders, I would think the early founders of Microsoft, Amazon, e-bay were more leaders than managers. Leaders are passionate. How many people get promoted to manager because of their passion?
Hopefully, I will be able to work with more leaders than “managers” as I look for my next employment opportunity. Those are the companies that will be market “leaders” in their respective space.
Stuart
Talent Manager (and I am one!) is a very difficult title to address with anyone not within the HR and/or the corporate spheres. Usually, it’s either misconstrued as someone scouting for the next Hollywood blockbuster, or — and this is very common — the response is “oh, so you do recruiting?” As we all know, TM is so much more than that.
Anyone have ideas on a better name?
Ms. Melbourne,
Unfortunately, the meaning of “financial planner” has been poisoned. About 15 years ago it was usurped by Wall Street once the title “stock broker” became synonymous with huckster. Everyone used to have a “stock broker”, today everyone has a “financial advisor/planner”. They are still one and the same. Many self-titled Financial Planners/Advisors are nothing more than cold-calling commissioned sales drones. Becoming one of these drones is a simple matter of passing a short multiple choice securities test that frankly any monkey could pass.
A CFP (Certified Financial Planner) that practices comprehensive personal financial planning is more of what you are looking for today. CFPs operate under a code of ethics and are board certified – similar to CPAs. A good CFP will look at your entire financial picture, everything from risk management issues like insurance*, to personal financial statement creation & analysis, life stage needs, and much more (hence the use of “comprehensive”). By now you might be suspecting that I must be a CFP, and you would be almost right. I’m at Georgetown University doing my studies for CFP certification. So I can’t help you myself since I’m not there yet (and it would be unethical for me to even suggest it), but my faculty are at the top of this field and I can point you in the right direction if you have any questions.
* a good CFP will ask you to bring in your insurance policies and will read them front to back to assess the quality of the policies and how they can be improved…like if you need a rider, as you mentioned.
Thanks and I hope maybe this info proves useful to at least someone.