Introduction
We sometimes get this question some of us don’t really know how to answer. What do I tell people? My title? What I really do?
Some time ago I read an interesting article about this (that I can’t find anymore, ADHD … you know) where someone tried to explain the different types of how to talk about a job. I will try to explain the concepts with my own words and give examples for my own role.
Job title
This is the short title that maybe is on your business card (if you happen to have cards) or sign at the door to your office (if you happen to have an office). In my case this would be “Engineering Manager”, or what I prefer “Senior Engineering Management Squirrel” (if you would like to know more about why, just ask).
Job description
This actually is what you tell people, when you are at a meetup or party and someone asks, what you do. This normally is a bit longer and contains a personal view on what your tasks and responsibilities are. For me a possible example is “I work with a team of software engineers and I’m responsible for their growth, career and partially also wellbeing. This also includes high level roadmap planning and stakeholder communication and management. I’m a people manager, not a tech lead.”
Job profile
This is probably the text someone wrote as a job offer that you applied to. Which essentially means this is also what HR thinks is your job definition. That can be a list of bullet points with tasks and responsibilities. The job offer itself would also contain a list of perks or benefits and other conditions. These are not relevant for an internal job profile.
I have to leave you without a profile, because actually I never saw one for my job. I did not apply for a job, I was extremely fortunate to be asked if I wanted to join.
Final thoughts
Not having a job profile to refer to is an uncomfortable situation, especially for people new to a job level. Because the profile would define some expectations, the team and the company has for the new joiner. For me this was not that much of a problem, because leveraging my experience (gosh, I sound like one of these business suits …) I started to take responsibilities as I saw them coming or as I was asked to do them. In higher positions there also always should be some slack to fill a role the way you prefer to.
Update
Since comments are not yet working, I’ll add an update this way. I had a nice discussion on Mastodon about this article. And there was an addition, that really makes sense. The job posting as a first draft of a profile might be OK. But a real job profile, like “welcome, this what you’re going to do” is different from a job posting. Example: at a previous job my profile (the first one I ever got!) included things like limits for what I was allowed to sign in contracts. Like “you can sign contracts up to 50k€ on your own and up to 500k€ with your manager cosigning”. This something that is important, but that you will never find in a job posting.
On the other hand there are phrases or requirements in a job posting, that are specifically designed to attract a certain target group of people. Think of it as promotion for the job. That doesn’t need to be in the job profile exactly like that. But certainly if you promise some attractive tasks or benefits they certainly should find their way into the profile. Otherwise you just lied to the candidates.
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