How to determine titles for employees at your startup
George Carollo
Cofounder and COO
July 5, 2024
•
4 min
Job titles play a crucial role for job seekers, especially in the startup world. They indicate the responsibilities and experience needed for the job, helping candidates quickly assess their fit for a position. In startups, where roles often evolve rapidly, titles can indicate a company's structure and potential for growth. Impressive titles can also serve as an incentive for candidates who are hoping to open doors to better opportunities down the road. It’s important to note that titles at startups may not always align with traditional corporate hierarchies, so companies should make it clear in the job description and interview process what the expectations for each role are.
Common pitfalls and how to avoid them
I often work with other founders who want advice on what they should call their open roles. Often, they are first-time hiring managers who have never written job descriptions or posted roles on job boards before, or sourced candidates outside of their network. I want to share a couple of common mistakes they make. One is inflating job titles: applying "senior," "executive," or "chief" even when their company is very small can create an unnecessary hierarchy. Another is being too creative or vague with job titles: don’t ignore industry-standard job titles or use trendy titles like “marketing guru.” Most importantly, make sure that your job title reflects the actual job responsibilities. It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often the title doesn’t match the actual work. It’s important that when job seekers are searching for a data analyst role, for example, the job responsibilities are not for a data engineer. Check out my Donts below for more specific pitfalls to avoid and why.
Here are some tips that I can share with my fellow founders. When you’re hiring candidates, look for versatility. I can tell you from experience that in any startup, employees often need to wear multiple hats. Look for versatile and adaptable candidates who are comfortable with ambiguity and eager to learn and take on responsibility. Prioritize cultural fits. It’s important to hire people who align with your company’s values and work style. You’ll be building your company together, and you’ll want people who will help you reach your goals as an organization. Run a great hiring process. What does that mean? Move quickly to secure top talent before they're snatched up by competitors, offer competitive compensation, and conduct thorough interviews to fairly assess candidates.
✅ DO:
Add "Founding" to the titles of your first 1-2 hires. eg. "Founding Engineer"
Founding does not indicate seniority, just the time that someone joined. It doesn't cost anything to add "Founding" to a title, but the effect of doing so is big. Adding this to a title will also more accurately represent the impact this person will inevitably have on your business.
Add "Strategist" or "Growth" to titles, where appropriate. eg. Sales Strategist, Growth Marketer
Be flexible on titles that make a candidate feel good and are still accurate for the role. Titles like "Customer Success Strategist" or "Growth Engineer" will help candidates with their career prospects and elevate the role they take on. Candidates gravitate to titles like these because they can more clearly define a path to broader Strategy, Growth and Product roles in the future (which are very appealing positions). By giving people these sorts of titles, you're propping them up to do this while remaining accurate to the role they play in your company.
Add "Lead" to a title when your team is ready for someone who will have a higher impact on a per-project or per-product-area. eg. Customer Success —> Customer Success Lead, or Data Platform to Data Platform Lead
This attracts more ambitious people, who desire leadership experience or want to drive objectives forward.
❌ DON'T:
Hire someone who is over-indexing on the title (eg., negotiates heavily for a more senior title). It could be a signal of values misalignment or a general misunderstanding of how startups work.
Give candidates "Chief __ Officer" or VP titles just because they're first in a role or department. They are usually executive roles that you want to hire later in your company's life, and giving out these titles early on limits your ability to hire a more senior person without demoting someone or creating a conflict. Giving them a "Head of ___" title is a better call.
Give candidates "Manager" titles before the need for managers arises. This won't be sustainable as the company scales. Managers should be good overseers & delegators first and foremost. Early hires in a role or department are more often incredible executors, and it's hard to evaluate someone’s managerial ability early on. It may be tempting or attractive to do this because it gets people excited to join, but it also gives them nowhere to go or grow, and can create conflict later on.
Add too many levels before you're ready by creating hierarchies like "Senior" "Staff" without having a clear leveling framework will give people mixed messages and might cause dissatisfaction.
Be overly specific or niche with your titles. It can be tempting to give someone a made-up title like "Head of Partner Risk Onboarding", but this can be a turnoff to candidates because they don't understand the divisions of roles in your org, or how their role fits in.
Talk to us at Dover and learn how we can help you hire top talent.
Article originally written February 16, 2021 and revised July 5, 2024.