Job Titles 101

In my daily travels as a job board owner, I see job titles by the dozen. They list the typical and sometimes strange positions: Sales Rep, Administrative Assistant, Marketing Director and even one for Beer Pong Marketing Manager. But too many of them fail to describe the job and entice the reader.

So here's a few tips to jazz up your job titles.

1. Describe, describe, describe. I believe in being as descriptive as possible in the job title to offer potential candidates a quick overview of what the job is about, the industry its in, etc. Here's a good example of this from Virgin Atlantic, one of my clients who posted this job recently.

Account Manager, Sales Development (Entry Level Airline Corporate Sales)

This title describes the job title, the job function and the industry. It offers a quick glimpse into the role at the firm.

2. Add location to the title. Especially if the job will appear on a national job board. For example;

PV Module Scientist - Lower Maryland

This will give more context since job seekers are very location focused when it comes to job searching.

3. Use keywords. The more keywords in your title the better since the job board search algorithms are more likely to list your jobs first. In this job for New Business Development Manager I would rewrite it like this;

New Business Development Manager - Direct Marketing, Sales

4. Don't use acronyms. In the PV Module job from above, I would have written it like this;

PV Module Scientist, Photovoltaics - Lower Maryland

PV is an acronym. You should spell it out since it means 'photovoltaic'.

Chris Russell has been running niche & local job boards since 1999 as the President & Founder of AllCountyJobs.com, LLC. He is also a job board consultant.