Creative Job Ladders 🪜
Context is everything when you're talking about roles & responsibilities for different jobs.
Today I want to talk about job ladders. Have you heard of this term?
If you haven’t, a job ladder is the range of titles and positions that can exist in a team, group, division or discipline within a company.
Knowing the job ladder of your particular discipline, as well as the way your company treats job ladders, is critical. Similar to how a women’s size M might fall off you in one store and be skin-tight in the next, creative titles aren’t standardized. They don’t mean the same thing in different workplaces, nor do they carry the same responsibilities.
Understanding the job ladder is important both within your organization if you’re trying to understand how many titles there are between, say, Junior Designer to Art Director; but it’s also important when you’re interviewing for a new job. Because there’s the potential that in a different job, a title that sounds “lower” than what you are currently might be exactly the same level.
On the flip side, there is the potential that the same title might actually be a bit lower than what you’re currently doing.
Additionally, because some disciplines and companies have far fewer job titles, there is much more range in the experience level and associated pay for certain titles. It’s baffling, right?
To give you a concrete example, I whipped up a few types of job ladders off the top of my head. Please don’t take these as set in stone or a complete reference; I just want to illustrate how different they can be.
Do you see the differences in titles between agency and brand? And how much space is in between titles in the tech example? And how there’s different amounts of space between certain titles on the rung?
What all this means, practically speaking, is that when you work for a company there might be way more range in responsibilities & pay than the same title at a different company.
For example, at a tech company, you might have someone who’s been a Senior Designer for 6 years and is functionally doing the same job as a person titled “Art Director” at a brand. Similarly, you might have a person titled “Senior Art Director” at an agency who’s functionally equivalent to BOTH of those people. 🤯
What this means for your job search:
Going from a more “senior sounding” title to a more “junior sounding” title may actually be a lateral or equivalent move depending on the context. So don’t rule out applying for jobs that may sound “lower” than the title you’re looking for, and consequently, don’t rule out applying for jobs that have a higher-sounding title.
Read the job description carefully, and try to understand how the job ladder works at a company before you apply to roles - if you overreach on the title you’re applying for, you run the risk of being ignored and/or annoying the hiring team. For example, maybe you were a Creative Director at a small start-up agency - but at a FAANG company, your equivalent title might be “UX Lead/Manager”.
What this means if you’re hiring:
You may be losing out on qualified candidates who avoid applying to your team because the role sounds too junior or too senior. You may want to include some kind of disclaimer or “key” in the job description to help them decipher how the role might translate to other types of businesses.
Don’t rule out a potential candidate based on previous titles alone; get under the hood and try to find out what they did in each of their roles.
That’s all for this one! Back with more next week.
XOXO,
Cathy
This was a great post! It's so easy to compare yourself to something that is miles away from what you thought it would be... this is a great reminder to check all the details first