I know people who are obsessed with titles. They care more about having a particular title than about the responsibilities of the job itself. I once got an email from someone whose signature line had six different acronyms. I guess I was supposed to be impressed by this, but instead I had less esteem for that person out of the gate. 

Your title does not matter to me. In fact, your degrees, your experience, your years in the business do not matter to me. More education, more experience in an industry or in a role are supposed to be consistent with better performance. In the real world, this is not always the case.

They’ll give anyone a senior title. I work with many people who have a senior title. Senior project manager. Senior consultant. What does that mean? Is a senior project manager that much better than just a project manager? It depends on the person. 

Here is a dirty secret of hiring. The only place titles matter is in Human Resources. They classify jobs and salaries based on titles. Have you ever known someone who had a senior title and had no business being senior anything? Here is what probably happened. That person was most likely an external hire and was asking for more money than was allowed for the job he or she applied for. For whatever reason, the company wanted to hire that person. In order to do that, they offered a senior role to be able to pay that person more money. Was the person qualified to carry out the responsibilities of what a senior role should entail? Who knows.

Titles do not matter to me. What matters to me is whether you are good at what you do and get the job done. I call this “running it.” I want to work with people who run it. Are there people who have fancy titles or degrees who run it? Sure. But there are also people who don’t have all the degrees or the experience who have “eye of the tiger” and run it. I am just as happy to have those people on my team.