Medium, Low, High: Dial Into Your Ideal PM Job Title
MAKING RANK: ENLISTED, CORPORAL, MAJOR, GENERAL
Your title matters; don’t be convinced otherwise. Like military ranks, established companies and start-ups use titles to establish role and expectations. Title is a key component, and effectively part of your compensation package. Companies at different lifecycle stages handle titles differently however. In order to get the title you want, you can’t wait until you’re in a promotion cycle or interviewing a new company to advocate for a role promotion. You must be a great employee to start with. It’s also useful to understand how companies young and old use title assignment to entice you to join, or get you onboard while mitigating risk in case you’re not as awesome as advertised.
Start-ups in my experience have two modes when it comes to titles. Either they attract you to join with generous titles, or they apply the philosophy of ‘titles don’t matter’ where most people have basic titles including ‘member of technical staff’, ‘account manager’, or ‘product manager’. Established corporations can be more risk averse. Using established levels, each role and associated success criteria are well-defined.
WHY IT MATTERS
Product managers don’t write code, engineers don’t write marketing campaigns, and salespeople don’t take product support calls. Your title is an indicator of what your job role is. Within your career role, the correct role level also matters. A Junior PM, a PM, a Senior PM, a Group PM, and a Director of PM do different things. It’s all in the range of product management roles, but the responsibility and the results expectations are very different.
Melissa Perri has a great visual for this from her book, ‘The Build Trap’ which clarifies this.
Your title level also sets baseline for your future job prospects and success. When you apply to move to another company, they look at what you last did. Recruiters running initial searches inside an ATS or LinkedIn Recruiter are led to find people on the basis of keywords and search criteria. If your title is ‘Associate PM’ and they’re looking for ‘Senior PM’ you won’t show up in the query result. The ATS after all is just a database that stores profiles and gets searched for results.
Great recruiters will dig deeper and cast the net wider, if they need to. Many won’t need to, however, when the first ATS query gives them 2,000 candidates already at the target level. If you’re operating at a more senior level with success and results, therefore, it behooves you to get recognized in your title (and compensation). Making the jump across role levels in a job search is harder than a lateral job search since you’re seeking two transitions at once. I.e. You’re trying to convince a new company you’re the best candidate for them, and that you’re qualified for a role with more responsibility that you’ve had in past roles.
CAREERS TAKE TIME
This can make career progression a long game. For many, careers invested in continued vertical and horizontal learning and progress take years to develop. Directors and VPs at many public companies have usually spent 20+ years working and getting better at their craft, while also expanding their exposure and education into other parts of the business.
I’m not in my first job, and it’s likely that I’m not in my last job before retirement. When you change companies, your next role will very likely be a permutation of your current role. This assumes you’re not changing career paths, industries, or something altogether different. E.g. If you’re an Account Manager, in most cases you’ll probably look for another Account Manager role, or perhaps seek vertical growth as a Senior Account Manager. This will be factored into your job search with the position level you applied for. The recruiter and hiring manager on the other side know this too.
Your current title matters for the future you because it sets the baseline for the job opportunity conversation. A Sales Associate won’t be getting called to interviews for a SVP of Sales opportunity. It’s not the correct next role because they’d be missing huge swaths of necessary experience and skills. That same person may get asked to interview for another Sales Associate role, or perhaps a Senior Sales Associate role if they had several years of experience. If you have the wrong title for the superior work you’re actually performing, you’re doing yourself a disservice since it’s limiting your opportunities.
THE NEW JOB ZIG ZAG TITLE CYCLE
A pattern I’ve seen many times in the careers of friends, and have even witnessed in my own career, is the up-down title bounce of your role when you transition to a new company. This can happen for a number of reasons; some of which are justified. This shouldn’t be cause for alarm because there are normal reasons for it, and because you can’t always believe what you read in someone’s self-written public profile.
Start-Up Job Title Inflation
Cash is king at a start-up because they’re always operating with a burn rate and a visible horizon to a zero balance bank account. The only way to fill up that bank account is to earn revenue, or get a cash infusion (investment). Salaries are one of highest operating costs for a start-up. Therefore start-up salaries can often be modest in the early years, with more weight placed on equity compensation. Titles, however, are free in terms of cash. It’s easier to give someone a better title than more money. It’s also a way to entice them to take on start-up life and work like a maniac. As a result, start-up titles tend not to map to the same title in large corporations. Upon acquisition, you will often see people’s titles reset to something a level or two lower in the corporate hierarchy. This is the zig zag.
No one loves this but in some cases it makes sense. If you’re the CPO of an eight-person start-up that’s just been bought by a large public company, you’re not going to retain that title. It’s much more likely that the scope of your former role translates into a Senior or Group Product Manager inside the larger company. Your role is still valuable, but you’re not the CPO of a public company with broad management responsibility, overall product direction leadership, P&L, etc. In addition, the larger company may already have someone in that role. If your company/product is now a small piece of the larger portfolio, it makes sense to rationalize the combined organization.
Corporate Risk Hedging
Large companies will sometimes hedge and offer you a lowered role title when you join if they want to hire you but have some uncertainty. This is a way to mitigate risk of you not working out, or not working to the level of your title. In the latter case, you may be a good employee who is doing the job of the lower title well, but the job of the higher title poorly. Mis-leveling can set you up for failure and cause some serious negative downstream effects. You might actually cause greater damage seen in poor performance, unnecessary team member attrition, or unhappy employees who also want higher titles. This outcome may or may not happen. The difficulty is that when it occurs, the impact may take months or a year to be realized. These mistakes are expensive to fix.
If you’re great at your job and you’re a fit for the same or better title, stand your ground and negotiate for it.
Some large companies will also reset your title as a matter of policy or culture. This is a hard sell when you’ve spent years developing your career and someone wants you to start over. If that company is a Silicon Valley giant, you will still get paid very well at least, depending on seniority.
You have to decide if this is a deal-breaker when receiving a job offer. If you’re great at your job and you’re a fit for the same or better title, stand your ground and negotiate for it. If you need the job and your leverage isn’t high, you may need to make a yes/no decision about accepting the role. If you are good and take a slightly deflated title, you should make it up in short order if you’re with a good company by killing it in your new role.
GETTING BOUGHT VERSUS BEING SOLD
There is an aphorism regarding how companies are valued in the acquisition process. When a company is acquired by another company you may hear, ‘Were they bought or were they sold?’ The nuance is this: If the larger company really wanted and pursued the smaller company, the company was probably bought and the acquirer paid a premium to get them. Getting sold is the opposite. If you need another company to buy you, it reads as, ‘you need an exit’. Perhaps you’re not doing well. Perhaps you’re out of money for operations? Maybe your market went flat, etc. If you need a buyer, you’re selling yourself and it’s not hard for acquiring companies to be aware of it. Therefore the company will sell at a discount. E.g. Acquihire, asset purchase, buy to kill.
These can apply to the job seeker too. If a new employer pursues you when you weren’t looking for a job it may result in a great offer. This can apply if you’re a passive job seeker who’s open to new roles but not seeking them actively. This is where internal and external recruiters are active.
In contrast, if you’re looking for a job actively, you’re applying for roles and presenting your candidacy. There’s nothing wrong with this. If you’re a great candidate it will shine through. It puts you in the salesman role (for yourself), however, and the company in the buyer role. This changes the dynamics of the negotiation. Most of us start our careers in this mode.
DIALING INTO YOUR IDEAL JOB TITLE
Set the dial to HIGH for best results; if that’s what you’re going for of course. You might be more of a MEDIUM person and that’s ok too. By the time you’re interviewing for a new company, many of the factors that will drive your opportunity range are already defined. If you’re career-driven, getting better roles is a long-term objective set in place and maintained over several years.
Let’s look at the framework for this from the hiring company point of view. You’re a Product Manager at Acme company and you’re interviewing for new product roles. This is a general formula for your potential outcome:
CURRENT ROLE x RESULTS x REPUTATION x DEMAND = OUTCOME
In short, multiply these four values to predict your job offer outcome. I gave this some thought because early in my career I focused on what I did and what I wanted to do next. It was only after a several years that I started to understand that results tied directly to your work are critical to show. Later I understood how reputation and demand also mattered. Working hard and hoping to get recognized is not enough. Many cultures teach people humility as a virtue which can make learning how to position and promote your accomplishments very awkward. It is best to learn to overcome this barrier. Self-promotion is an important skill to learn and it needn’t swing all the way over to self-centeredness.
Current Role
This is who you are now. Are you a Support Engineer? A Product Manager? An Engineer? What’s your starting position and seniority level?
Results
If you’re looking for a promotion or changing jobs for better roles, you must be able to show that the product, business, or unit you were in is demonstrably and measurably better because of your direct efforts. What did you accomplish? What is the result? Why is it better? If you don’t have results to show, it will be hard to show that you’re a great hire or promotion candidate.
Reputation
Do you work at Joe’s Computer Shack or do you work at Microsoft Azure? This probably sounds elitist, but where you have worked shows your progression and your choices. All things being equal, which of two candidates would you look at first given these two companies? Progression is also very descriptive of a candidate. Not everyone starts at a high-profile company with a high-profile role. I certainly didn’t. Do the companies you’ve worked for have a reputation for excellence and success? Though not a guarantee, this signals that you may also share that caliber. It’s smart if you can target the companies that you work for to align with the arc of your career.
Demand
How much do they want you? Are they pursuing you or are you pursuing them? The difference will set the tone for the outcome. E.g. When you’re in high demand you will get more competitive offers.
Scenarios
THE EASIEST DIAL TO TURN TO HIGH
None of this is easy to be honest. If you are looking to grow in your career, the easiest item in your control is demonstrating results. Your current role and company you work for are what they are. You don’t directly control how in-demand you are. If you want a promotion within your current company or your future company, focus on delivering results and value. This might take a few years. You also need to understand how to show your results so that others see them. E.g. Your resume, your professional social profile.
ZIG ZAG YOUR WAY TO THE TOP
As described, roles and titles can appear to fluctuate on paper in the course of your career. If long-term growth is your goal, pursue growth opportunities and don’t worry about your title so much. This may sound contrary to what I wrote earlier. What I mean is, follow your trajectory and fight for better roles, more learning, more exposure, and deliver more value to your company. Your roles will get and sound better over time. Smart recruiters and hiring managers know that titles don’t mean the same thing between start-ups and large companies and will calibrate for that. Instead they want to see the arc of the career story and determine if it makes sense for them. You also need to be able to tell your cohesive story and thread the career progression needle for your audience. If you focus on the long-term goal, your titles may zig zag a bit but you will make progress in the direction you want to go in.
PROMOTIONS AREN’T PARTICIPATION PRIZES
Ambitious people often work hard and drive for success with results. It’s a combination that can lead to career growth, increased responsibilities, and corresponding title increases. Getting the right title for the role you fill matters. The title itself isn’t the outcome however. It’s recognition that you can perform at that role level. To complicate matters, it takes more than results to grow upwards. Can you work across groups, hire teams, demonstrate leadership? As you grow, you’re no longer directly responsible for producing the actual outcomes. You need to create and grow teams that can do this.
DON’T ALWAYS BELIEVE THE HYPE
Comparison is the thief of joy. Careers span years and some people do get lucky. Don’t be too self-critical when you see a perfect trajectory in someone else’s professional profile. Career progressions are rarely shaped like a hockey stick graph that goes, ‘up and to the right’ in a perfect arc. They zig zag. If you see LinkedIn profiles that look perfectly smooth, they are very likely summarized to now show the story the author wants you to see. After all, resumes are marketing documents. I know of a few people I’ve seen over a long career omit irregularities entirely from their glossy LinkedIn profile.
WHEN IN DOUBT, BE AWESOME
Titles are not frivolous. They have meanings that directly map to what you do. Within a title, you might be new, you might be experienced, or you might be a stellar performer. If you’re succeeding beyond the scope of your title, you might be ready for the next level. If so, make a case for promotion.
If you want a promotion but aren’t yet fulfilling the full scope of your current role, or have more to learn, you should focus on becoming stronger, adding value, and accruing accomplishments. When you are great, you show it with results, respect from peers, and have created a strong foundation beneath you for someone to follow, you deserve the right title that goes with your work.
ABOUT LUKE
Luke Congdon is a career product manager living and working in Silicon Valley since 2000. His areas of focus include enterprise software, virtualization, and cloud computing. He has built and brought numerous products to market including start-up MVPs and billion-dollar product lines. Luke currently lives in San Francisco. To contact, connect via luke@lukecongdon.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecongdon/.
Originally published at http://lukecongdon.com.
