What exactly is a title schema?

A title schema is a way for your organization to standardize what you call things. In the early days, a company may play fast and loose with titles. And, as a company grows, so to do the different roles people play.

Your title schema is a subset of your Position Profile Architecture.

A title schema should be quick to understand and applicable to the widest audience possible. And if your structure is consistently applied, inferences are immediate.

Structure in Practice

• Differentiation between Manager Track and IC Track: a role on manager track is designated by placing the management level in front followed by a comma. Conversely, IC track roles that include quasi manager titles should have that at the end of the title)
  • (Ex. Manager Track = Director, Inside Sales; IC Track = Customer Success Manager)
• Spell Out Words: avoid abbreviating words.
  • (Ex. Senior Software Engineer, not Sr. Software Engineer; Customer Success Manager, not CS Mgr.)
• Entry Level Role Designations: in lieu of ‘Associate’ for L1 titles, L1 and L2 roles may be differentiated using a “I” and “II” differentiation at the end of the title.
  • (Ex. Software Engineer I and Software Engineer II instead of Associate Software Engineer and Software Engineer)
• Use secondary details only if essential: where possible, aim for brevity. However, if the same title exists at different functional levels (segments), then separate with a comma.
  • (Ex. If secondary details are necessary: Customer Success Manager*, Enterprise*).
• Titles should map across functions: within your Position Profile Schema, your titles should have harmony.
  • (Ex. Senior Manager, Design should be the same level as Senior Manager, Engineering).
• Avoid Special Characters: do not to include characters
  • (Ex. ampersands (&), dashes (-), colons (;))
  • While less of an issue nowadays, special characters can cause system issues.
• Industry Standard: titles should generally mirror what is in the marketplace.
  • (Ex. Software Engineer, not Coder)

What about special business titles?

Sometimes the business will insist on giving a special title to someone. (Ie. what they write in their LinkedIn profile or email signature). Generally speaking, you should minimize misalignment between Position Titles and Business Titles.

Be judicious about giving discretion over business titles as they often end up causing confusion over time. (Ex. if someone is “Director, Marketing”, are you OK with them changing their title to “Head of Global Marketing”)

For some of my thoughts around ‘Head of’ titles in practice, see here.