Inflated and nonsensical job titles found online
Brian Gongol


One of the problems with social media is that people have the power to inflate their job titles -- or create job descriptions for themselves that are composed of nothing but fluff. When you're really good at something, you don't have to create a title around it -- everyone knows you by your reputation. Warren Buffett is Chairman of the Board at Berkshire Hathaway. Bill Gates is the Founder of Microsoft. Henry Ford was...Henry Ford. Job-title inflation (and its fraternal twin, nonsense-title creation) just annoys people and obscures what people actually do.

Real examples of inflated or nonsense titles found on LinkedIn in May 2012: A person can wear a lot of hats, to be sure. And over-eager social-media types may very well just be trying to make sure their online profiles show up with every possible Google search that leads to their page. But...there's a pretty strong inverse correlation between the number of words required to describe a job and the amount of need the economy actually has for the work described.