What’s the strangest job title you’ve ever heard? Sometimes it seems that organisations are having a secret competition to come up with the most puzzling way possible to describe a role. When I find myself having to read a job title several times just to try to work out what it means, I come back to the question ‘what’s in a name?’.
There are some career roles we’ve all heard of – what I refer to as ‘the famous few’ – such as doctor, teacher, midwife, lawyer. We might well have a few misconceptions about what these roles actually involve in real life (I’m looking at you, popular TV series!), but at least we’ve heard of them. Some career roles may be less universally known, but still have a clear naming convention – so you see similar job titles across different organisations. And then there are the rest, the wild west of job titles. In this vast and mysterious array, the same career role can be described in a baffling variety of ways, with names changing depending on the current fashions and/or whims of employers.
So what?
Why does it matter what a job is called? It’s all work and you don’t get paid by the number of words in your job description after all (although imagine how concisely written they would be if you did!). I want to argue that this does matter. Naming something helps to shape it, as language is part of the way we understand the world.
We can also use language to make something sound more or less appealing to specific subsets of people. Naming a job title a particular way could make it sound more attractive to men rather than women, or younger rather than older people etc. This (inadvertently or deliberately) introduces bias into the job-hunting process by screening out those people who are not in sync with the language used. We are, as a species, sensitive to social cues, so many people would rule out a job if it didn’t ‘sound like me’. Language is a powerful determinator of how we see ourselves and our place in society – both things that are highly relevant to occupational choices.
Aspirations
‘You can’t be what you don’t see’ is a classic truism of career development, with good reason. There are an overwhelming number of job options to consider, so narrowing things down is an important part of the career development process. Ideally though, we want people to exclude things on the basis of choice (they don’t like the tasks involved, it doesn’t have the right pay or conditions, the qualification requirements are tiresome etc). There’s a gap between the ideal and the reality here though, and unknown jobs fall right into it. With the best will in the world, you can’t really consider jobs you have never heard of when making career choices. Of course no one knows about every job (even career development professionals!), but the bigger the unknown jobs list is, the more potential opportunities you’re missing out on.
Setting aside ‘the famous few’, the jobs we’ve heard of can come from a variety of places. What work our friends and family do. Jobs we’ve seen or heard about via media and social media. Jobs that relate to an existing area of interest (something we might research). Then there’s the jobs we’ve brushed up against in our own lives (a paramedic that helps after an accident, a plumber that fixes a dodgy boiler, a coach that improves workplace performance etc). This means that everyone’s ‘jobs known to me’ list is subtly different, and is one of the ways in which our circumstances and backgrounds might act upon our aspirations. This potential issue is heightened by poor naming conventions – some jobs are so confusingly titled that they are really only accessible to people already in the know (e.g. those who already work in that sector or are close to someone who does).
Job hunting
Job hunting is not the easiest task at the best of times, but the experience is definitely not enhanced by having to play a game of ‘guess the naming convention’ to even find the jobs you’re interested in.
This issue has been exacerbated by the way we find vacancies today. If you are searching for a role with a standard name across employers – say ‘geography teacher’ or ‘project manager’ then you can make good use of online search engines and vacancy sites, as your search terms are clear. If you’re looking for a role without the luxury of a standard name, however, then your search time is vastly increased by the need to trial multiple keywords that may or may not bring up the sort of opportunity you’re looking for. More time spent interrogating search engines means less time to dedicate towards finessing an actual application.
You can also only search for the keywords you know, which may not show you the full range of opportunities. This means there is an unlevel playing field in job hunting, depending on how standardised the names of roles are. Those with weaker digital skills (and effective use of search engines is certainly a skill) are also likely to be disadvantaged by this process.
Job status
I think job status is at least partially socially constructed, that is to say linked to cultural ideas rather than physical reality. Consider the fact that the role of advertising executive is higher status (and therefore paid!) than care assistant – then think about the role each of these jobs plays in the functioning of our world and the people within it! Because job status is socially constructed, it changes over time. Jobs may gain or lose status over the years as ideas in society change.
Some changes to career role names may be part of an attempt to influence status. Consider the current number of jobs with the words ‘executive’, ‘architect’, ‘lead’ or ‘director’. Would you consider a job with one of these words in the title as higher status than one described as ‘manager’? Either way, the renaming of jobs is not neutral – it may be part of a design to make a job seem higher status, and therefore more appealing. Over time, jobs that succeed in increasing their status by changing their names will likely attract better pay and conditions. Which means your pay may be impacted by the name of your job role, rather than what you are actually doing!
Job evolution
I don’t want to be too cynical – not all changes to career role names are attempts to manipulate how they are seen. Jobs change over time. Being a nurse in 2024 is a very different role than it was in 1924, so it makes sense that we need different language to describe the full range of tasks expected. A nurse practitioner is a very specific role, with particular requirements, so it’s useful to use specific language to describe this. Sometimes job titles need to evolve, as the roles themselves change. These changes should, however, be specific, meaningful and limited – so we can understand and stay on top of them.
What can we do?
The career development and education sectors can play a part in improving this situation in a number of ways. In a similar way to pay transparency campaigns, we can throw our support behind calls to standardise career role naming conventions (as led by professional bodies, workplace communities etc) and make the case for clearer and more consistent job naming to employers.
We can also talk about these issues with our clients and make sure they know there are so many job opportunities they just haven’t heard of. We can encourage them to broaden their horizons by exploring new territories of career roles. We can share job-hunting strategies that help to level the playing field between those looking for ‘standard’ vs ‘non-standard’ job roles.
Lastly we can be honest with ourselves about how many jobs exist that we don’t know of (or know of under a different name!). Sharing jobs we’ve only recently heard of with other career development professionals can be a fun exercise in shared CPD! The goal here is not to try to learn every single career role (surely impossible), but to spark our curiosity about what’s out there and keep an eye on naming trends. This is all part of LMI (so we are probably doing at least some of this already!), but maintaining a focus on job name changes as well as job role changes will help each of us to answer the question ‘what’s in a name?’.
- What’s in a name? How the naming of jobs impacts on career choices - 26th June 2024