So my employer recently undertook a compensation study of some kind, and as a result of this survey, they rejiggered all the job titles and levels, and in my case, I went from being a Senior Analyst V to an IT Analyst III. (higher is senior)
When I asked, the explanation I got was that the Analyst I and II grades aren’t in use, so they just did away with them, and renumbered what used to be Analyst III, IV, and V as I, II, and III. So I’m still at the top level of analysts for my employer, but the numeric designation went down. Pay’s the same, FWIW.
Some of my colleagues are TORQUED about this; they’re looking at it as being a de-facto demotion, because if they decide to go elsewhere, it’s going to look different as a Analyst III versus a Sr. Analyst V, and like they aren’t as senior or competent or whatever.
I’m inclined not to get too wound up; every employer seems to have different structures and titles; our Sr. Analyst V might be someone else’s Analyst 1, if they order in the opposite direction (i.e. Analyst V is the lowest, and I is the most senior). And some places may have I, II, and III, while others may have six levels, and our Analyst III is equivalent to Analyst VI elsewhere.
Am I under-reacting? Should I be more concerned about this in the long haul? Do employers really care much about that “Sr.” or the number after the job title?
If they’re departing from something that’s standard and benchmarked across the industry in your region, then that could be bad.
Seems like a completely pointless change for the sake of some sort of cosmetic tidiness. That in itself, as a poorly justified change occuring without any consultation, is a tiny bit of a red flag for me.
I’m not thinking it’s standardized, and in fact, I went from a II to a V when I was hired, and being merely a II didn’t seem to have any detrimental effect- I think the title was meaningless.
Noting that the changes were the result of a “compensation study”, it doesn’t appear terribly likely that less-impressive sounding job titles are the result of a push to pay employees more in the long term.
They’ve renamed job titles at my work numerous times. I think they do it bc certain titles become “unsavory”.
For instance, the job title “operator” is no more. And if you flub up and accidentally call someone an “operator” in front of a manager, they will immediately correct you “It specialist!”
The irony here is, the people who once held the job title operator never minded it.
Lord only knows how the top brass got it into their heads that “operator” a pejorative. But at least they have good intentions I guess.
I think you don’t need to worry. If I were looking at a resume (and I see a lot of IT resumes since I place consultants), I’d look at Sr. Analyst V and think the organization you came from had a bunch of title inflation. To me - connoisseur of resumes - it seems that there must be an Analyst I through V and then a Senior Analyst 1 through V at least in your organization. That’s 10 levels of analyst - far too many. Analyst I, II and III are enough levels. (Now if you just had Analyst and Senior Analyst, that would be fine - or Analyst 1 through V - its the combination of both Sr and the high number that make the thing ridiculous.)
We look at skills and accomplishments, not titles.
I worked for a very very large financial services firm that seemed to change my job title every year. Usually in January, I’d get a new box of business cards and remember to go in and change my email signature. It never affected my pay.
Horrible company, but they never played games with people’s pay.
Job titles vary so widely across the spectrum that employers are typically more interested in your job profile and experience than anything else. I’ve seen people with titles like director or manager who didn’t have any direct reports. And in my book if you don’t have any direct reports you’re not a manager. So when I see a title with a number behind it, senior, lead, etc., etc. I don’t really know what it means without looking at the job description. No, I don’t think it’s a big deal.
In recent years we updated our job profiles throughout the company and given what a colossal pain in the ass it was I promise you we didn’t just do it for cosmetic bookkeeping reasons. The OP says they changed the profiles as part of compensation study which passes the smell test in my book.
It allowed us to eliminate job profiles that were no longer in use.
It allowed us to consolidate job profiles that were similar. (Why have 4 different job profiles for administrative assistants when they all pretty much do the same thing regardless of what department they’re in?)
We made sure that the job descriptions were actually accurate.
It makes it easier to figure out compensation.
It makes it easier to set performance standards.
We did change some of the job titles and the numbers behind them but I can’t recall any complaints. We have gotten quite a few complaints from people who now show as being in their job profile for much less time than they’ve actually held the position. But the system also shows us how long they’ve been in the position so it’s not like they’re losing seniority or anything.
Compensation studies typically look at job duties rather than titles to determine what a employee’s salary should be (in addition to experience and performance of course).
The big question I have and which wasn’t communicated, is what the pay grade is for the new position. Is it the same range as before, is it narrower, or is the mid-point different? Since I work for a city, pensions are determined by some formula dependent on your salary in the last few years before retirement, and if they condensed the salary range, that makes getting an official promotion even more important than before.
As it stands, I’m already an interim senior manager (assuming that’s what the job title still is- I don’t know), so if I can make that permanent, I’m not too concerned about the analyst titles really.
Ours was “your highest-paying three years”, so we had an unspoken rule to give people as much overtime as they wanted if they announced they were retiring in the next year or two.
Before that, I worked for a marketing firm where the boss would give promotions… instead of raises. I just figured future employers would be impressed with a resume that showed I went from Designer to Asst. Art Director to Art Director to Creative Director in a few years… so I’d more than make up for the penny-pinching boss by getting a much better-paying job next time.
Did you consult the staff whose job titles were being changed?
I’ve been through quite a number of organisation restructures in my working life*. The successful example were always done with consultation, dialogue, benchmarking and design.
The examples where it was done top-down with upper management/board deciding ‘those three things sound like they are exactly the same’ were not very successful.
*(I worked in local government for a while - it seems restructuring is where most of the effort goes)
The new job titles might be nothing more than a random act of management.
But it might also be a sign of changes to come, accompanied by layoffs (or promotions, but that seems less likely.)–and all under the wing of a different organization.
Pay attention to whatever secrets you can discover, before it’s too late.
HR shouldn’t be writing job descriptions in a vacuum so we consulted managers and others. The project took the better part of a year and we let everyone in the company know what was going on. Nobody left work on Friday as a Programmer III and were surprised on Monday to find that they were now Lead Developers.
One problem we ran into was that our HRIS keeps track of time at the company, time in position, and time in current job profile. While the system keeps track of time in profile, we don’t actually use that for anything but we do use time in position which remained unchanged. When yearly appraisals rolled around people started to notice their time in profile was really short and wanted us to change it back but we couldn’t do that.
Oh, I completely agree. I find very often that if I don’t consult others even on a minor project I might end up stepping on someone’s toes.
The impression I get is that HR took this compensation study, job title changes, and pay grade adjustments (they went from 30-ish lettered pay grades to 44 numbered ones), and just applied it without actually doing any testing or communication or anything like that, instead of socializing it with everyone, calming everyone down, etc…
The good news is that I work for a municipal government, so there’s absolutely no concern about being bought out by someone. Layoffs are potentially possible, but historically they’ve been exceedingly rare, and we’re not in that sort of fiscal position right now.
So it’s likely simply a fuck-up by the HR people. In fact, the numeric code for my position didn’t change, just the description, which went from IT Business Analyst V to IT Business Analyst III. The pay grade did change, but it went to a slightly better one, by about $1000 on the upper and lower end.
My co-workers are absolutely wound up- they’re looking at the numeric change as a demotion, without realizing that the numbers don’t really matter. They’re filing grievances, consulting attorneys, etc…
And I feel more than a little bit weird, because I’m just not perturbed by this. Nobody doing hiring is going to much care about the numeral after the title; those are so non-standard that they can’t legitimately be compared, and there’s also little way for companies to even find out what another company’s internal job title structure is. So I seriously doubt they put much stock into it.