Title and Level Over Cash

I was talking to a friend and mentee today about her evaluation of a new potential role. She wanted my thoughts on whether the role looked like a good opportunity.

Easy.

She currently is a VP in an organization. The role for which she’s interviewing is a bit of a subject-matter switch, a little reach for her into a new functional area. But the role is framed at the director level. The salary range gives her a good chance to increase her comp enough to make a nice difference.

The first thing I did ahead of speaking to her was to look at the backgrounds of every VP at the prospective organization. The second thing was to get a feel for how the org structure looked at this relatively small company. I noticed a few things right away.

First, the VPs were not more experienced, better educated, or seemingly more competent (from the outside) than my friend. They seem strong. She is very strong too. I shared my sense that she would be walking into a company working one level below where she should be, and she would likely have adverse feelings about that situation sooner rather than later.

Second, the org structure suggests her new role would not be part of the senior leadership team, and so she would likely be left out of a lot of important, strategic meetings. Because she is in a senior/officer role in her current organization, included in all (or most) major decisions, this change would feel significant even if her comp were…comparable.

Third, the person to whom she would be reporting has a title that is 2-3 levels above the “Director” title that my friend might secure. That was mostly just a sense of opportunity.

This led me to a clear thought that hasn’t occurred to me as crisply as it did in this situation: cash compensation is a distant second priority to title and level in a job negotiation. Obviously, this is only true to a point. Money matters. There are bills to pay, down payments to save up for, and children’s 529 funds to fund. I get that. I am not saying money doesn’t matter at all, I’m saying it is often not as significant as level and title in the context of an org chart.

Here are my arguments for that position:

Compensation is more fluid than title generally. Yes, companies have budgets and annual plans, but there’s flexibility in the system. At a minimum, compensation is usually revisited annually, but if someone comes in as an outsized performer, companies can true up comp imbalances even more immediately than annually.
Title and level are often ossified and inflexible based on the org structure around a given role. If you are hired as a director and you report to a VP who reports to an SVP, you may only have one shot at a title change. That won’t be annually; that will generally be when someone above you leaves or gets promoted. That could be a matter of years.
Although salary is now legally more public, title and level convey impressions inside and outside your organization. There are exceptions where, say, some companies have serious title deflation. There it matters less what the title is and more what your level is. Ask yourself the meaningful questions here:
- Where will I have influence and where will I not?
- What are the chances someone will be hired in between me and my likely boss? (That’s not “wrong,” but it’s something to consider before you take a new role.)
- What meetings will I be included in and which will I only hear about from my manager?
- Am I okay with all those potential circumstances?

I am eager to hear your arguments.

And, if YOU want to negotiate better in your next interviews or a conversation about promotion in your current role, I promise you won’t find a better resource than my book Never Ask for the Sale. If you don’t believe me, check out the reviews, which detail specific use cases in which the tools and exercises in this book advanced so many people’s goals.

Epilogue: After drafting the above, I received a note from a different friend with an update on their own job search, which I’ve anonymized and used with their permission:

Hi Sue,

Hope you are doing well! I wanted to give you an update on my job search.

In a very unexpected turn of events, I have returned to GreatCORP at a Principal level.

Your book was really helpful in a couple of ways. I was actively interviewing with another company that was going really well approaching the process with passionate ambivalence and authenticity. When I was asked to return to GreatCORP, I was able to achieve the title I wanted and the salary plus options package outcome was the best in my career to date.

Thanks for your wonderful book and ongoing friendship.