The California Equal Pay Act exposed the one thing experienced technology professionals already knew. Job titles indicate little about the actual job function or the value of any individual. This is true not just from company to company, but even within an organization. To comply with the law, companies gathered the internal data and posted an honest salary range, some being in the hundred of thousands of dollars. At first, people cried foul, but the reality is that your job title does little to describe the job you do, the value you provide to your company, and the compensation you get for doing your job.

Focus on the job role, not the Job Title

There are countless examples of the same job title having completely different meaning across organizations. A data architect at one company may be responsible for developing databases while in another, may set standards for the organization. A data engineer in one organization is a thought leader responsible for the tools and architecture needed to move data; while in another, they build the actual data pipelines. The skill sets and experience between these job roles are very different and the compensation required to keep a quality individual is as well. Many organizations spend a lot of time focused on the job titles and salary ranges for those jobs. HR departments spend countless hours evaluating and pricing those roles based on the titles. When the jobs are posted, the candidates either don’t meet the expectations of the hiring manager, or when they do, their compensation ask is way outside the posted range. Too much focus was put on the job title instead of the skill set needed to do the actual work. Some companies now will interview potential candidates, then when they find the one they want, they post a job with the title the candidate asks for.

This isn’t just a corporate issue. Many candidates get focused on trying to find a job by job title. They skip over great opportunities with great compensation because instead of focusing on the job role, they see a title and move on. They may have received a senior title due to promotion, but another employer may pay more for their skill set in a junior role.

Keep an open mind during the hunting process

Hopefully, if you are hiring, it’s because your team is expanding or replacing an employee who got promoted. There are a few things to focus on when looking for that next great thing.

First, keep an open mind and don’t look for the thing you had. Look for the next great thing you want. Focus on the things hardest to teach or account for. Experience, soft skills, aptitude, along with the other qualities your organization values, should be top of mind. Tool knowledge for some roles is very important, but for other roles, especially in the data space, like data architecture, data analysis, data engineering, or data modeling, the tools are just a means to an end. A great tool can be misused by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Don’t exclude candidates because they may have not used your querying tool for example. It might be that the tools they used were better than the ones you have.

Secondly, when you do find the candidate you want, don’t let them go. I see far too many managers let a great candidate go because ,either, they were the first interview or they were a few dollars more expensive than they wanted to pay. A story comes to mind from my mom’s days as a realtor. She had a young couple looking for a first home. The first house she showed them was in the exact location they were looking for and had everything they wanted in their price range. Because it was the first one, they wanted to be sure and check out a few more. The next two were just not like the first one, but by the time they got around to putting an offer in, it was already off the market. They spent the next year looking at houses and always compared them to the one that got away. In the end, they settled on something not as good as the first. Cost estimates for hiring a person, from interviews to training and knowledge transfer, range in the tens of thousands of dollars. If your HR department can’t give you a figure, you should work on identifying one so that you always have that in the back of your mind. When you find the right candidate and it’s a little more to bring them in, the cost of losing them and finding another perfect one may be a lot more.

If you are a candidate, I received the following advice from a friend that may help you as well. Write down five things you like about your current job, five things you don’t, and five that are missing. Refer to your list before applying and before accepting an offer. Be open with the hiring manager about what you are looking for and why you turned down an offer. Give an honest amount you’re willing to take up the job for. Focus on the job role. Is tool knowledge a primary focus of the role or not? Just because someone puts a preferred tool on the job description doesn’t exclude you if everything else about the job sounds perfect. Most importantly, don’t get caught up in the job title. Titles can change. Are the job role and the salary what you are looking for and reflective of the value you bring to an organization?

THe Value of a Quality Recruiter

Everyone hopes to post a job on their company site and find a great candidate, but the reality is that for non-entry technology roles, this is very hard to do for the reasons I described above. Candidates submit for jobs shooting for roles they aren’t qualified for or are overqualified for based on their current compensation and job role. So, what are you to do? If you’re lucky enough, you might have an internal recruiter who scours LinkedIn hoping to find a quality candidate. If not, you will work with placement firms trying to bring in enough candidates. You don’t have to settle.

Over the years, I have been approached by many recruiters, either checking my availability, or offering up candidates for roles I was helping hire for. Like every profession, there are good ones and bad ones, and like every relationship, it takes effort from both parties to build a great one. Over time, I have developed some great relationships that have helped me find the right candidates for jobs, as well as find the right opportunities when they opened up. Here are a few tips that have worked well for me.

First, the greatest value a recruiter brings is their knowledge of the market and candidates in the market. Before you post a job, contact the ones you trust and describe the job role you are hiring for. A good one most likely has some candidates in mind and gives you an expectation on how much it would take to hire someone in for the role. A bad one will ask what your hiring range is and promise to get working on finding you a candidate.

Secondly, keep the line of communication open. Giving your recruiters a heads up will allow them the time needed to find you quality candidates. Picking up the phone when they call, regardless of whether you have a job posted or not, will keep the communication flowing in both directions. When a great candidate becomes available, they will call, even if you haven’t posted that future role yet. You might get first crack at someone who you otherwise would never meet. As your relationship grows, they will dial in on the types of candidates you are looking for and you will spend a lot less time looking for, and hiring, the right candidate.

If you’re a candidate, don’t allow a recruiter to submit you for roles you have no intention of taking. Be sure they have a relationship with the company if they make any promises on negotiable items. You don’t want to interview and get an offer for a job you want and find out their pay is non-negotiable, for example. Know your value on the open market. If you don’t, a good recruiter can help you determine what that is. Finally, if you gave an honest expected salary amount to the hiring manager and if the person offering you a job is haggling over a few dollars, think about what your next raise request or promotion will look like before you accept a counter-offer.

Job Titles are the least of your worries

Whether you are an employer or the employee, the job title is the last thing you should worry about. From an employee standpoint, having a job title won’t help you get a new job. If you work with a good recruiter, not having one won’t keep them from telling your story and getting you in front of the right people. In the end, you will need to demonstrate you have the skills necessary to perform the job role. Job titles, many times within an organization, don’t reflect the salary you should expect. When moving to another organization, job titles could mean a completely different thing.

As an employer, hopefully you’re focused on providing an environment where your employees can grow and perform the job roles you need them to. When you do need to hire, don’t let the job title get in the way of finding the right candidate. Identify what role you need filled and what would make a great candidate. Partner with the right people on finding the right one, and when you find them, don’t let them get away.

Remember, those fancy technology job titles you posted or showed up on a candidate’s resume are only as valuable as the paper they were written on. Hopefully they were written on toilet paper so that you get a little extra use out of them.