Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

LettersJob descriptionsRecruitment & retention

Impressive titles do little to deliver the goods

by Personnel Today 15 Nov 2005
by Personnel Today 15 Nov 2005

The points raised in your feature on ‘uptitling’ are all too familiar (‘What’s in a name?’, Personnel Today, 1 November).

When talking to organisations about defining occupational roles, the problems such flashy job titles cause become apparent. However, Richard Wilson’s suggestion of giving interviewees a diagram of where they will sit within an organisation frankly won’t help them at all in deciding whether or not they should apply for a job or are right for the role. It will simply show them the existing hierarchy.

Both recruiters and potential staff need a clear view of the skills a role requires, and a common language to discuss them. What self-respecting finance professional would manage their department without facts and figures to audit? Yet organisations expect to plan and motivate based on an ever-changing vocabulary of job titles and gut feelings.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Detailed frameworks and skills analysis can reveal far more than a job title. The focus should fall on measuring employee success through goals and deliverables, not how impressive the title sounds, or where they sit on the tree.

Ashley Wheaton
Director and CEO
InfoBasis

Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Driving for work increases risk of accidents
next post
Laws in place to prosecute workplace bullies

You may also like

One in seven ‘revenge quit’ in latest employee...

7 Jul 2025

Graduate jobs this summer ‘will be toughest since...

25 Jun 2025

Employers struggling with soaring candidate deception

25 Jun 2025

UK engineering and manufacturing firms face hiring struggles

23 Jun 2025

Aldi to hire for 1,000 new supermarket roles

23 Jun 2025

Only a third of recruiters receive high-quality job...

20 Jun 2025

Number of new nurses from abroad falls by...

18 Jun 2025

Capita rolls out ‘agentic AI’ to speed up...

13 Jun 2025

Redundancies boost candidate availability at fastest pace since...

13 Jun 2025

Healthdaq: Shaking up health and social care recruitment

11 Jun 2025

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+