Job titles can be… confusing.
What exactly is the difference between the Senior Experience Management Specialist and the Executive Vice President of Experience Management? Hard to say.
Often, identical job titles can mean wildly different things at different companies. As The New York Times wrote last week, the title of “Chief of Staff,” which seems to crop up everywhere, “can mean almost anything.”
But let’s be honest with ourselves: A title like “Chief of Staff” is hardly the strangest thing you’ll find in the dystopian bouillabaisse that is LinkedIn’s job section.
So today, we’re rounding up some of the strangest job titles the internet has to offer… and trying our best to make sense of them.
Companies started posting jobs for Ninjas, Wizards, and Rock Stars over the past few years in order to stand out from other employers in tight labor markets –– and make it clear to applicants that they care about “culture.”
And despite indications that overly creative job titles are NOT an effective way to recruit top talent, the practice of posting bizarre job titles has continued.
According to the employment search engine Indeed.com, the number of job titles containing the word “Ninja” increased 140% between 2015 and 2018.
Last year, Ninja took the top spot as the most popular weird job title, followed by Rockstar, Genius, Guru, Hero, Wizard, and Superhero. But that’s just the beginning.
Followed by our best plain-English attempts to decipher what the jobs actually entail. Buckle up, rock stars: