The Hidden Cost of Title Inflation (And How Role Clarity Gives Your Clients a Competitive Edge)

Walk into most organizations today, and you'll hear impressive titles flying around:

"Senior Vice President of Strategy & Transformation,"

"Chief Culture Officer,"

"Global Head of People & Purpose,"

But what do these titles tell us? Not much.

As executive search firm owners, you've probably experienced this firsthand. The more inflated or ambiguous the title, the harder it becomes to evaluate whether someone is the right fit. And yet, most recruiting and selection processes still treat the title as the defining credential for candidates and open roles.

The result? Stress, poor performance, wasted time and money.

Title ≠ Role

A title is not a Role.

A title is branding.

A Role is a contribution.

A title tells you how someone wants to be perceived.

A Role tells you what they do.

The danger for your clients is that they often hire for the title, hoping that a "VP of Strategy" will automatically fill the position and contribute as a Visionary, Decision-Maker, or Integrator.

But the reality is that they are better off as Advisors, Facilitators, or Caretakers. When expectations and reality don't match, dysfunction follows.

Organizations want people to "bring their authentic selves to work," which sounds great in theory, but in practice, it turns into:

• Hiring based on personality or popularity
• Creating inflated or trendy job titles to attract talent
• Avoiding honest conversations about contribution and collaboration.

CollabGenius Solves This Problem

At CollabGenius, we help executive search firms and their clients break this cycle. By going beyond job titles and surface-level traits, by identifying:

• The Role(s) required by the job, team and business.
• Objectively and accurately shortlist qualified candidates based on their Role(s) and alignment with the needs of the job, team, and organization.
• The behavior that enables applicants to make significant contributions when joining the team and organization.

Search firms can now present applicants who are a Role-fit, team-fit, and collaboration-fit using our proprietary talent assessment, high-performance team-building strategy, and coaching intelligence.

We also have a Role-based offer presentation guide so you can make offers knowing exactly how a candidate will contribute to the position, team and organization, and the candidate will know exactly why they've been selected and how the team is structured for high-performance...who doesn't want to be part of a winning team!

The Competitive Advantage for Search Firm Owners

Your clients need someone to help them decode:

• What Roles and positions are missing from the team?
• What Roles and positions miss the mark?
• Why is one candidate more aligned with skills, contribution and collaboration?

CollabGenius empowers you to become a trusted advisor who helps clients build high-performing teams by focusing on Role clarity, not title inflation.

If you want to stop placing titles and start placing contributors, let's talk.