Okay! The company that I am onboarding at today has been calling my position both a Content Lead role and a Senior Content Marketing Manager role (they keep switching back and forth in the job description and the employment forms). I mentioned this to my manager and asked what was the job title. Her response was that either works for her and that I can choose whichever I prefer. So, my question to you folks is... which seems more senior and will set me up best for other more senior roles in the future?

How do they expect the team / the role (i.e. you) to grow? While I would personally go with Content Lead, if you'd be the only "lead" there, then that may lead to ambiguity or reasons not to promote you if your title already sounds like a director/head of content.

I’d vote for Senior Content Marketing Manager, for two reasons. 1) “Lead” seems more ambiguous to me and could potentially describe e.g. an IC who leads the charge on executing on strategy rather than strategizing themself. 2) My own situation Context on 2: My company does a (really rather silly) thing where department heads get a single public-facing title that sticks with them eternally, rendering promotions essentially invisible. So I came on as Head of Content (level 1 — read: Content Marketing Manager) and was recently promoted to… Head of Content (level 2 —read: Senior Content Marketing Manager). From the outside, though, it looks like nothing has changed for me 🤷‍♀️

My boss just introduced me to someone external as Head of Content in an email. lol. I'm so confused. But the role is great so far! This is great feedback. Thank you. That is kind of annoying. Senior Head of Content? That seems like what they did to your role.

Leading a smallish content team and at earlyish stage startup means you get more titles than Mithrandir, apparently!

What I did when I joined an early stage startup and was able to negotiate my title: I searched LinkedIn profiles for the most frequently used titles relevant to my role. Then I picked a version of that. Why: That probably would be what sourcers, recruiters and hiring mgrs would search for most frequently. That’s where your title counts most — during LI search. If you’re just cold applying for roles, titles typically won’t make much difference, because they’ll be focusing on your business results, responsibilities and relevance to the opening. They’ll typically look beyond just title then. Like when I’m screening resumes, I’ll pretty much ignore titles, since companies use them highly inconsistently. Also, whatever your title, there’s actually nothing stopping you from giving yourself a generic job description in your LinkedIn title. Like if I’m a director of content, there’s no reason I can’t call myself a head of content (if that’s factually correct). You just don’t wanna be making up levels, like VP of content, if that’s not your actual title or job. “Head of content” isn’t always a title; it’s often a descriptor. Like I was VP of content and people would intro me as head of content from time to time, because they either don’t remember your actual title and / or it doesn’t matter. Many people don’t give a crap once they’re confident in their careers. Often, the lower down people are, the more they care about titles. Sometimes that’s because they’re measuring themselves against their peers. Personally, you can call me whatever title. I just want my compensation to reflect my responsibilities and contributions.

Thanks @white-potato-56800 As always, this is very helpful and insightful! I appreciate it. Also, apparently, it's an organization that isn't precious about titles. Someone suddenly changed their title to technical creative director and someone mentioned this to the CEO... and his response was that he didn't care as long as the guy's manager was fine with the change.

Cool, @incalculable-hamburger-60092. Often, earlier stage startups are loose on titles. Usually, they start tightening when they begin gaining significant traction. Because then they start scaling and building job architecture and job families, and working on consistency in cash comp and equity tied to levels. Then, unless maybe there are one-off title changes, companies have to worry about ripple effects and the people they’re trying to hire from better established businesses. They might quibble about title downgrades, title relativity or such. At some startups, there’s title correction sometimes at that stage. Like OG folks with inflated titles sometimes get downgraded, which can create angst. But that’s a good problem to have, LOL.