Still not a senior designer? Don’t worry, job titles don’t mean shit
Recently a friend told me that they were nervous about applying for a new job because it had senior in the title and they weren’t called a senior in their existing role.
Designers are obsessed with labels
This fixation with the senior title in the design industry seems to have become more apparent in recent years.
I suspect social media maybe the issue. We’re now exposed to not just the designers in our companies but now designers across the world. LinkedIn is a flurry of designers gaining new titles and promotions at breakneck speed and it’s so easy to feel like you’re being left behind in your career when your peers are jumping to more senior titles every year. And I was just like this. When I was 7 years into my career I was yet to be called a senior designer.
Getting the title upgrade was my primary focus which overtook what really mattered: doing good work.
Titles depends on context of others and actions
3 years later I can tell you I’ve now had the title of Senior Designer, Lead Designer and Design Partner.
And what I can tell you is that my role and the job I did day to day barely changed. So why is that? Well for one, a title in one company or agency will differ from another. To be able to truly label something we need a contrast, something to compare it to. If you work in a small agency you might quickly go through the ranks verses a larger company that needs a slower pace of title change otherwise everyone would be senior which makes a whole other operations, people and ego problem.
At the end of the day, it’s your behaviours and your actions that truly dictate your seniority not your title. I’ve worked with junior designs who acted like seniors and I’ve worked seniors who are shockingly bad.
Just because you have a title doesn’t automatically make you that thing.
Okay! Titles are useful sometimes…
Now if I put my wider perspective hat on, I do understand the importance of titles. They help give context as to who is expected to be responsible for what. Titles also help people like women be taken more seriously.
Known as the authority gap, it is assumed that if a woman doesn’t have senior in her title and she is working with a male peer of the same title she will assumed to be less experienced.
I’m not saying don’t try to go to the next title level, titles and pay are interlinked. So by all means get that new title if it earns you more money. But don’t think that a new title is a one way ticket to happiness or automatic confidence.
Confidence and seniority comes from self belief. Not a title on LinkedIn.
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